The life and times of St. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury and primate of the Britains

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SAINT ANSELM

VOL. I.

THE LIFE AND TIMES

OF

ST. ANSELM

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY AND PRIMATE
OF THE BRITAINS

MARTIN RULE, M.A.

IN TWO VOLUMES— ^VOL.

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LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1883

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(77ie rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved)

TO

MY WIFE,

BUT FOR WHOSE INDEFATIGABLE SYMPATHY

IT HAD NEVER BEEN WRITTEN,

I DEDICATE

THIS RECORD OF

A PHILOSOPHER, CHURCHMAN, STATESMAN, AND SAINT
DEAR ALIKE TO EACH OF US.

PREFACE.

The work I now put forth to the world has attained its
present size and pretensions I scarcely know how, and in my
own despite.

My first idea was that of a very small book indeed, con-
sisting of extracts from Eadmer's * Vita S. Anselmi,' and such
few insertions from his * Historia Novorum ' as might seem
necessary for giving a character of continuity to the work ;
but I soon abandoned it.

My next was that of a translation of the best passages in
Eadmer, held together by a brief explanatory narrative ; but
that was in its turn relinquished.

My third scheme was, still keeping to Eadmer, to reproduce
without stint what he has said about St. Anselm in his two
works. But that would have been to do what the Dean of
St. Paul's had done before me with a grace, a skill, and an
appreciation of our hero's character which it would be pre-
sumptuous in me to praise, and might have conveyed the
impression that I had written under no other inspiration than
that of theological rivalry.

Meanwhile, however, my Orderic and my William of
Malmesbury were falling to pieces from constant use ; I had
read over and over again the inestimable but almost un-
explored mine of St. Anselm's correspondence ; my common-

viii PREFACE.

place book was filling with references to all sorts of odds and
ends of eleventh and twelfth century literature ; I felt that life
was not drifting away in idleness, and I resolved not to hurry
myself.

Five years ago, from this very day, I first set eyes on Aosta,
and as I had already collected all the serviceable materials to
be got for the construction of St. Anselm's pedigree, it was
high time I should see his birthplace.

On the 27th of September, then, five years ago, and a few
minutes before midnight, my wife and I took our places in
the coup6 of the diligence which was ready to start from
Ivrea to Aosta. The moon was a night or two past the full,
the sky was without a cloud, and the weird splendour of the
mountainous gorge, up which we sped hour after hour, on the
left bank of the dark and sullen Doire, made an impression
on the memory of each of us which is not likely to fade away.

And so the hours passed. The road, rising by a slow
gradation from the river's brink to the edge of the valley,
had brought us to a level space covered with vineyards, when
I perceived that another kind of light than the moon's was
penetrating the sky, and that a new freshness was in the air ;
in a moment or two the satellite's effulgence was fading in
the dawn ; and in a moment or two more, as our course
turned suddenly westward, away in the clear distance, like an
airy curtain hung across the sky, the sublime range of Mont
Blanc, all white and carnation, gleamed and glowed to the
touch of the sun's first beam. It was not till the whole valley,
from verdant plain to airy pinnacle of snow, was deluged
with the day, that I was able to speak. * How fitting a birth-
place for St. Anselm!' I exclaimed: 'No wonder that his
soul touched heaven.' And, indeed, I never think of the

PREFACE. ix

marvellous union in him of grandeur and simplicity, of
majesty and grace, of severity and tenderness, without re-
calling that sunrise over the Valley of Aosta.

We remained for several days in the valley, identifying
the Becca di Nona as the mountain of his mystic dream, and
the Pondel as the bridge of the first * Meditation,' and passed
some delicious hours at Gressan.

The following winter was spent in Rome ; but four months
of desultory research, frequently interrupted, issued in little
more of immediate interest to my readers and myself than
the conviction — a conviction confirmed over and over again
in numberless libraries both abroad and in England — that not
a few of the ' Meditations ' assigned to St. Anselm by the old
editors are not his, least of all the sixteenth.

I was already preparing to leave Rome when a manu-
script was one morning placed in my hand, as I sat working
in the library of the Vatican. It was the most precious
treasure I could have wished to have ; for it contained the
sweet little anecdote of St. Anselm's childhood — literally an
anecdote, for it has never as yet been published — which the
reader will find incorporated into my second chapter ; and,
as if that were not enough for one day's happiness, an
authentic list of all the monks professed in St. Anselm's dear
Abbey of Le Bee, from the beginning down to comparatively
modern times. It would be impossible to overrate the in-
terest, the importance, and the biographical value of this
precious document to all lovers of St. Anselm ; and I am
proud indeed to place a portion of it in the appendix to my
first volume, for the service of such of my readers as may
be disposed to use it as a key to the earlier portion of
St. Anselm's correspondence.

X PREFACE.

But I was determined to see Schiavi before turning north-
ward, and after some trouble found that the present name of
the place is not * Schiavi/ but ' Liberi/ or rather * Villa dei
Liberi,' instead of 'Villa dei Schiavi,' as from time imme-
morial till the other day. ' Liberi in Formicola ' is, I believe,
its usual designation. The old name of the place com-
memorated an invasion of the Terra Laboris, in the year
926 or 927, as recorded in the 'Chronicon Cavense,' and
other like documents.

I cannot help thinking that the famous fresco at Sant'
Angelo in Formis must either have been inspired by one of
St. Anselm's Meditations, or suggested by himself. One would
like to know at whose instance it was executed.

My visit to the spot where the *Cur Deus Homo' was
written was a sort of apparition to the good people there.
May such apparitions by their frequency cease to astonish.

It is needless to go into detail about other places made
memorable by St. Anselm, unless it be to say that Pont
Authou is not far from Rouen, and at the last railway station
before Brionne, and that the site of the first monastery of
Le Bee is about half-way between Pont Authou and Le Bec-
Hellouin. There is a narrow road on a raised causeway
across the valley ; and on the right of this road, to a traveller
turning into it from the high road to Le Bec-Hellouin, is a
strip of meadow enclosed by a babbling brook and the beck
proper. On that strip of meadow stood the poor little mud-
walled monastery where Lanfranc lectured, where Anselm
composed his most fervent meditations, and where he con-
structed the argument of the * Monologion.'

The story of St. Anselm's archiepiscopal career occupies
the whole of my second volume ; and I do not blush to

PREFACE. xi

confess that this record of the events of sixteen years has
cost me more pains than I dared to anticipate when I under-
took my task. But, great as they may have been, I cannot
hope, and will not try, to say how intense has been my
enjoyment, from first to last, of this delightful subject ; and
now that I come to write my last word on it, I do so with
very intense regret, for I am certain that I shall never find
its equal.

September 2%th, 1882.

CONTENTS

THE FIRST VOLUME

BOOK I.

THE EARLY LIFE OF ST. ANSELM.

CHAP. ' PAGE

I. St. Anselm's Infancy i

II. St. Anselm's Childhood 15

III. St. Anselm's Boyhood and Early Youth ... 34

IV. St. Anselm's Early Manhood 52

BOOK II.

THE EARLY RELIGIOUS CAREER, AND THE
PRIOR ATE, OF ST. ANSELM.

I. Le Bec 71

II. St. Anselm's Religious Vocation loi

III. The Beginning of the New Life . . . .117

IV. Prior Anselm's Labours 130

V. Prior Anselm's Influence 144

VI. Archbishop Lanfranc : the Monologion . . . 163
VII. Consecration of the New Basilica : the ' Proslo-

GION' 181

VIII. The Last Days of Abbot Herlwin 2cx5

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

BOOK III.
ST. ANSELM ABBOT OF LE BEC,

CHAP, PAGE

I. St. Anselm Abbot-elect of Le Bec . . . .213

II. Abbot Anselm's Consecration and First Visit to

England 225

III. Abbot Anselm in his Cloister : his Second Visit

TO England 245

IV. Death of William the Conqueror— Succession of

William Rufus 260

V. Abbot Anselm's Third Visit to England . . . 279

VI. Le Bec and Canterbury at the Close of 1089 . . 283

VII. Le Bec and Brionne in the Spring of 1090 . . 292

VIII. RoscELiN's Heresy : Abbot Anselm's Fourth Visit

TO England 300

IX. An Interval of Suspense and Alarm . . .312

X. St. Anselm's Appointment to the Primacy . . . 322

XI. The Last Days of St. Anselm's Abbacy . . .337

BOOK IV.

ST. ANSELM ARCHBISHOP-ELECT OF CANTERBURY.

I. Preliminary Considerations : St. Anselm's Accept-
ance OF the Primacy 361

II. Fealty and Homage : Enthronement of the Arch-
bishop-elect yn

APPENDIX 389

Book I,

THE EARLY LIFE OF ST. ANSELM.

CHAPTER I.

ST, ANSELM'S INFANCY.

St. Anselm was born at Aosta, between the twenty-first of
April, 1033, and the twenty-first of April, 1034.^ His father's
name was Gundulf; his mother's Ermenberg. Gundulfwas,
not improbably, a son or grandson of Manfred I., Marquis
of Susa, who in his turn was maternal uncle of Arduin,
Marquis of Ivrea, and for some thirteen years King of Italy ;
and thus of the kindred of Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, and
father of the illustrious Matilda. Nor can there be a reason-
able doubt that Ermenberg was a grand-daughter of Conrad
the Pacific, King of Transjuran Burgundy, and thus first-
cousin to the Emperor Henry H., and kinswoman more or
less distant to every considerable prince in Christendom. But
although St. Anselm was the son of a Lombard, it is scarcely
accurate to call him, as he has been called, 'the Italian
philosopher,' for the episcopal civitas of which Aosta was the
capital had never formed an integral part of political Italy .^

• It was not the custom of biographers in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth
centuries to record birthdays, and, with the exception of the first Otho, I know of
only one great personage in these times whose birthday is recorded ; and we owe
the information to the coincidences that it was on anniversaries of his nativity
that he went to school, embraced the monastic life, and was consecrated first abbot
and then bishop. The personage to whom I refer is Bishop Amadeus of Lausanne,
who attained the episcopal dignity in II4S' He was a kinsman of St. Anselm's.
Guibert of Nogent tells us concerning himself that he was born on a Holy
Saturday, but does not give us the year.

- Physically, however, it would seem, early at least in the twelfth century, to
have been regarded as part of Italy, if Hugues de Sainte- Marie may be accepted
as a witness (Migne clxiii. 847 B). Still, the political geographers, and Anselm
himself, refused to assign it either to Burgundy or Lombardy. Thomas Walsing-

VOL. T. B

2 ST, A NS ELM'S ORIGIN.

The sovereign magistrates of Aosta had from time out of
memory borne the title of count, as well as the older and
auguster title of bishop, until about the year 1020, when
Bishop Anselm II. demised his episcopate to the son of one
of his sisters — such, at least, is the most probable account —
and his secular honours to a brother-in-law, Humbert the
White-handed, Count of Maurienne, and progenitor of the
Royal House of Savoy.^

In the year 1032, Odo, son of Humbert the White-handed,
and first-cousin of St. Anselm's mother,^ married Adelaide,
Marchioness of Susa, who was, as I believe, niece or cousin
of St. Anselm's father, and thus added to the county of
Maurienne the rich and extended valleys that slope to the
east of Mont Cenis and of Mont Gen^vre, and possibly the
marquisate of Ivrea as well. And it must have been in
the very same year that Ermenberg herself was taken to wife
by Gundulf, who may, not improbably, have pretended to be
the legitimate heir to the domains enjoyed by Adelaide. In
which case the marriage of Gundulf and Ermenberg was a
political alliance between two families, each of which had
reason to be jealous of the counts of Maurienne ; Ermenberg's,
because two titles hitherto deemed indissoluble had been
severed to their loss in favour of the new house ; Gundulf's,
because an ancient usage had been broken to their loss, and
this again in favour of the new house. The author of these
griefs was the Emperor Conrad the Salic, who had already
obtained possession of the insignia of King Rudolf IIL,^ and
hoped thus the more readily to secure the Burgundian throne
so soon as it should be vacant. For Rudolf III. had two
nephews who were about to prove troublesome to his de-
ham {Hypodigma Neustricc) describes the saint as * Genere Langobardus, Augustge
civitatis indigena.'

^ The county of Aosta was converted into a duchy by Frederick Barbarossa.

^ The subject of Ermenberg's relationship to the house of Maurienne is dis-
cussed at length in the Appendix.

3 Art de verifier les Dates,

THE HEREDITARY BISHOPS OF AOSTA, 3

signated successor.' One of them was Odo of Champagne,^
a sister's son, whom the Emperor with difficulty crushed in
1034, by the aid of Humbert the White-handed ; the other
was Burchard, Bishop of Aosta, who at Lyons fought bravely,
desperately, and in vain against the foreigner; and who,
had he not been deprived of the military resources of the
valley of Aosta upon succeeding to its episcopate in the pre-
ceding decade, would, no doubt, have joined his forces to
those of Odo, and in such wise paralysed the arm of Humbert
as to defer, and perhaps prevent, the absorption of Bur-
gundy into the Empire. The bishops of Aosta, Burchard's
predecessors, so long as they were the allies of the House of
Burgundy, were of infinite service to the German sovereigns,
whose most convenient road into Italy lay across the Great
St. Bernard and down the valley of Aosta ; but Burchard,
now driven into a position of hostility against Conrad the
Salic, who by force and craft, rather than by legitimate
succession, had stepped into the throne of Burchard's uncle,
would have been a dangerous enemy to the Emperor, had
the means been left him of blocking the high road to Lom-
bardy. Hence the reason why it was the bishop's doom, as
he first grasped the crosier of Aosta, to behold the secular
mace pass from his reach into the hands of an uncle by
marriage, a creature of the Emperor's.

And further : the bishops of Aosta, allies hitherto of the
House of Burgundy and of the House of Saxony, had been
most useful in helping the princes of the latter dynasty to
suppress that rebellion against their suzerainty over Lombardy,
of which the marquisate of Ivrea was the chief theatre ; and
the reason is not far to seek why Adelaide of Susa should
now be betrothed to a son of Humbert the White-handed, the

* Rudolphi Glabri Historia, lib. iv.

* This Odo, or Eudes, of Champagne, was great-grandfather in the male line
our own King Stephen, whose father, the Conqueror's son-in-law, was thus, if

my genealogical speculations be correct, second cousin to St. Anselm. He fell in
battle, contesting his claim (a.d, 1037), and was buried at Tours.

B 2

4 THE COUNTS OF AOSTA.

creature of the Empire. For Humbert was thus made master,
besides the Little St. Bernard and the valley of Aosta, of
Mont Cenis, of Mont Gen^vre, and of the vast district con-
terminous with the county of Aosta, to which the passes of
those mountains gave him access.

The history of this district is involved in obscurity ; but it
is hard to believe that an acknowledged principle of succession
was not infringed in settling the fiefs of Turin and Susa on
Adelaide ; just as the prescription of a century — a pre-
scription, no doubt, intended to endure for ever — had been
broken in severing the earldom of Aosta from the bishopric.
Humbert the White-handed had a rival at Aosta in Burchard
its bishop. Can it be that his daughter-in-law Adelaide had
a rival at Ivrea in Gundulf .!*

If, then, these be correct surmises, it is easy to understand
what brought Gundulf to the precinct of the city over which
Burchard presided in the double capacity of chief civil
magistrate and chief ecclesiastical pastor ; and we learn with-
out astonishment that upon fixing his abode there he was
courteously constrained to accept the honours of citizenship
as a preliminary to his marriage with the prelate's sister.

The newly married pair had a palace in Aosta ; and,
although tradition does not point out its precise site, there
can be no doubt that it stood near the cathedral and the
bishop's palace, a quarter which, beyond question, must then
have been, as it is now, the best in the city.^ They must

* Visitors to Aosta must be on their guard not to believe those who point to a
certain house in the faubourg as that in which Anselm was born. In that house
I was shown a room on the first storey with the assurance that there he first
saw the light ; a similar story was told me concerning the room below it on the
ground floor. One was as true as the other ; for an inscription on the doorway
declares the house to have been h fnndameniis erecia A.D. 1505. We shall next
be informed that William the Conqueror was born at Hampton Court.

While speaking on this subject to a canon of the cathedral, I ventured to
suggest that the present house might possibly replace an older one which had
once belonged to the Saint's family ; for I could scarcely believe the story to be
a mere invention. But I soon learnt the truth. At Gressan there is a tower of

ERMENBERG'S INHERITANCE. 5

also have had a country-house in the valley, for in that
valley must have lain much, if not all, of the multimoda
hcereditas which Ermenberg at her death demised to Anselm.
There are no records extant to prove what may have been
the extent or the distribution of this property ; but those
who point to the manor of Gressan some three miles south-
west of the city as having formed part of it, would seem
in doing so to represent not the mere surmise of modern
antiquarians, but a genuine tradition.

refuge which appears to have belonged in 1200 to a certain Godfrey, the son of
an Anselm, who may or may not have been a kinsman of our archbishop's. In
the course, I believe, of the last century this tower belonged to a family who
also owned the house in 'Cao. faubourg. This is all. And, anyhow, the building at
Gressan which has recently been invested with the designation of * tour de St.
Anselme,' even if it existed in Anselm's day, was merely a retreat or refuge used
in times of imminent danger from invasion ; it was not a dwelling-house.

A local enthusiast has recently set up an inscription in bad French on a wall
of this tower, describing St. Anselm as ^ originaire de Gressan;'' a piece of pre-
sumption which I have heard characterised in no measured terms by those who
would have had every motive for commending the statement, had they believed it
to be true. His family had, no doubt, property at Gressan ; but he was a native
of Aosta.

I have in my possession a little manuscript life of St. Anselm, written in the
valley, and probably at Gressan. Had there then been a tradition that it was
his birthplace, this little treatise might have been expected to mention it. It says
nothing.

I was informed when at Aosta that so much of the town as lies east of the
via principalis is called the bourg or borough ; while the remaining, and by far
the larger part, constitutes the ville or city. It is needless to say that the
cathedral, the bishop's palace, and the residences of the cathedral canons are in
the ville ; the canons of St. Ursus live in the bourg, although their church is
outside the walls. How long this distinction may have subsisted I cannot say ;
but I cannot help thinking that as the ville itself has from the very first been
divided by the via quintana and the main street into four distinct portions, each
of these had in feudal times its own destination : the larger section to the north
of the principal street being inhabited by the bishop and the cathedral clergy,
and the smaller by the nobiles of the community. If so, then the house in which
Ermenberg and her husband lived may have occupied the site of the Palais Roncas,
now used as a prefecture ; and I believe that it is the immemorial site of the best
house in the place next after the bishop's palace.

Mr. Freeman in one of his smaller works expresses some surprise that a dis-
trict outside the walls of Aosta should be called la cite, as though the city were
outside the city. The surprise would be were the case otherwise. Cite is modern
French for civitas, and the civitas of Aosta was the territory of which Aosta was
the capital,

6 clochAtel.

The pedestrian who wishes to see Gressan will ordinarily
choose the road which, issuing from the southern gate of
Aosta, and crossing, after a short but steep descent, the
current of the Dora, turns rapidly to the right, ascends the
river's bank for some little distance, and then bears off from
it to trend its upward way over the sloping spur of rich allu-
vium that slips from the mountain's foot to the river. Here
lies Gressan. Two miles higher up the valley is Les Ayma-
villes — Aymonis Villa — the probable residence of a kinsman of
Anselm's who bore the name of Aymon. Above Les Ayma-
villes again, the road, by this time shrunk to a narrow bridle
path, climbs, rough, stony and irregular, the steeper mountain
side, till it reaches the edge of a ravine down which the
torrent of the Cogne rolls and thunders under the aqueduct
of Le Pondel. Gressan, Aymaville, Le Pondel were, pro-
bably enough, all of them portions of the ancestral inheri-
tance ; but St. Anselm's mother knew less of Le Pondel
than of Aymaville, and less of Aymaville than of Gressan,
as Gressan was by its aspect the most congenial to her placid
and contemplative nature. There is full documentary evi-
dence that some four years after the saint's death there were
people living at Gressan, one of whom bore the same name
as himself, and another the same name as an ascertained
kinsman of his ; and Gressan still boasts a domain so singu-
larly favoured by nature that we should be more than
sceptical were we to believe it to have belonged to any but
the principal family of the valley, and thus to Anselm's, and,
within that domain, the relics of just such a residence as the
Bishops and Counts of Aosta would have been likely to own.
The property is about twenty-five acres in extent ; its name
is Cloch^tel, the vernacular form of enclos du chdteau ; and
there hangs that about it which obliges the heart to confirm
the conclusions of the judgment. Sweet peaceful Clochatel !
Nowhere in this favoured valley does noontide heat scorch
less fiercely, as nowhere does evening gale or breath of morn

PORTRAITURE OF ERMENBERG. 7

blow more refreshingly than here ; here where, when autumn
days grow short, the neighbouring husbandman wends home-
ward bending beneath his gathered wealth of maize, and the
burnished poplars hang forth to the sunset their foliage of
silver and gold, and the chestnut falls soft on the turf, and
the bells of the drowsy kine make a mellow discord, and
down the vast valley to right and left the giant crags blaze
with an amber glory ; whilst far away the clear blue shadow
rises, creeping slowly over avalanche and glacier, and, as
it rises, the sky-touching snows of Combin, of Velan, and of
the nearer Becca di Nona, one by one quicken into rosy
splendour, and fade into night.

Here assuredly, if anywhere, was at least one country-
house of Ermenberg's family.

Ermenberg's son has drawn her portrait for us ; not indeed
as others had seen her, in her early bridal beauty, but as he
remembered her, a matron in middle life. He describes her
as a pious woman, whose goodness was less displayed in the
otiose contemplation of an exalted ideal, than in the con-
scientious observance of the duties proper to her position, in
the careful government of her household, in the discreet
administration and prudent husbandry of her inherited pro-
perty, and in the unassuming maintenance of a state suitable
to Gundulf's princely rank and to her own. Hers, too, is the
sterling praise of a will which ever responded to the govern-
ment of a sanctified reason ; so that if her son's generosity
of character was a gift inherited from Gundulf, it was to her
that he owed his habit of submitting thought and action to
the test of a higher law, and of striving to find the accordance
with reason of those revealed verities which are the subject
matter of faith. And if we are to believe that the exquisite
sensibility of his moral nature was derived from Ermenberg,
he surely owed to Gundulf the virtue scarcely less signal of a
constancy which nothing could appal.

As to Gundulf, he has been most unjustly treated by the

8 PORTRAITURE OF GUNDULF,

modern biographers of his son ; and were the aspersions but
remotely true that have been lavished on him, we should
have to describe him as violent and impetuous, as prodigal
and imperious, and as the willing slaVe and infatuated victim
of the world's false joys. But there is no authority for any
such description. The worst that we know of him is, that
he was generous to excess, and loved to spend his fortune
rather than to manage it with care. Rank and place asserted
claims upon his bounty which were not to be evaded without
dishonour ; and he responded to them like a thousand worse
men and like a thousand better, neglecting

the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.

But that he was a wicked, or, in any bad sense of the
word, a worldly man,^ sobriety dares not conjecture. He was
too generous and openhanded, so at least some declared, and
spent his fortune heedlessly ; whilst Ermenberg, by a singular
discretion alike in the disbursement and the husbandry of her
own means, played the part of what to this day is, in at least
the south of France, termed by lawyers a bo7zne mhe de famille,
Ermenberg ^ lived in the world beyond blame or adverse

' He is described, it is true, as scpculari vitcB dedihis ; but no harm is meant by
the description. The venerable Count Burchard, contemporary of Hugh Capet,
is described thus : ' Cum igitur his et aliis multis Domino placere studeret
virtutibus utpote vir saculari miliiicB deditus atque in cunctis mundi negotiis
implicitus \i.e. * employed,' as I shall prove in a future note] ejus mens Regi
regum fideliter devota mundo minima celari potuit.' — Duchesne, Script, Rer.
Franc, iv. 115.

He is further said to have been by some accounted ' non modo largus atque
beneficus sed etiam prodigus atque vastator ; ' but it is scarcely fair to represent
the combined value of these four words by the epithet unthrifty. The * pene
prodiga liberalitas ' of William Fitzosbom (William of Malmesbury, De Gest.
Regum) was surely something very different from unthriftiness. Nor would * un-
thriftiness ' express the princely weakness of Earl Robert of Gloucester, whom
William of Malmesbury {^H. N. i, § 14) describes as * in dando diffusus, et quod
minimi principem decet prodigus. '

* This is literally Eadmer's description of her, * bona matris fatnilicB officio
ungebatur. ' I suppose, then, that un bon plre de families or rather its Languedoc
or Norman equivalent, was already in vogue in Eadmer's day. Dean Church
describes her as a prudent housewife j but in playing the part of the prudent house-

r

DEDICATION OF THE CHILD ANSELM.

criticism, a prudent and thoughtful woman ; but, notwith-
standing her predilection for the religious life, died, so a
directing Power willed it, in the secular ; whereas Gundulf,
notwithstanding a bent of character which conformed only
too well with his vocation, relinquished in good time the
duties no less than the dangers of his state, took the vows
and donned the habit of a monk, and, a monk at heart as in
garb, died to the world ere yet his end came.^

The portraits of Gundulf and Ermenberg are companion
pictures, worthy of the son to whom we owe them.

It is very probable that after Anselm's birth Gundulf and
Ermenberg rerhained for a long time without a second child,
and that both of them were on that account, although from
different motives, the more willing to devote their unicus filius ^
to the clerical profession ; for an immemorial tradition had
taught Christian parents to consecrate only sons to God,
either because a solitary issue was regarded as a sort of loan
from Heaven which must be restored ungrudgingly, or because
such an act of confidence in the Divine goodness would, at
any rate, be repaid by the preservation of the child's life, even
if it did not win the reward of further progeny to his parents.
There can be little doubt that Gundulf regarded the child as
a future Bishop of Aosta, and indulged the hope of helping
him to regain secular prerogatives lost, but lost, as he hoped,
only for a time, to Ermenberg's house and to his own. Er-

wife she discharged but a portion of her duty, and exercised but a portion of her
right as inaterfamilias. Housewife, I apprehend, is to materfaf7iilias what
menagere is to mere de famille. Again, the Dean calls Gundulf * a Lombard
settler ; ' but surely settler is scarcely descriptive of a gentleman come to take up
Lis abode in a new place. Such a word may be, and in this instance is, as I
imagine, too literal to be truthful.

^ M. de Remusat and M. Charma must have been feeble latinists. They make
* circa diem obitus sui ' refer to Ermenberg's death. The subject of the sentence
is not Ermenberg but Gundulf.

2 Thus we are told of St. Omer : * Praedictum puerum, secundum Christianse
religionis a cunabulis ritum, ... in ecclesiasticis nutriebant disciplinis, tmicu7fi
enim Audomarum habebantyf/z«w ; ' and of Germar, Abbot of Pental : ' Hunc
siquidem genitores velut unicum filmm tenere diligentes tradiderunt scholis
nutriendum atque instruendum doctrina Christi. '

lo HEROES AND HEROINES.

menberg, on the other hand, had more generous aims. She
knew that, even should her child's career be unchequered by
contention and turmoil, the clerical life would for him be an
existence of dignity, of wealth, of civic pomp, of ecclesiastical
splendour ; and her chief ambition was to wrap his childish
hands in the altar-covering of some Benedictine monastery,
and leave there the flower of her life, now no longer her
own but God's, that stealing him thus from a world of sin,
of sorrow, and of shame, she might ensure him his celestial
crown. For the eleventh century, with all its wildness, all
its simplicity, all its unrestraint, was conspicuous for its
heroism ; and its heroism was sucked from the mothers of the
time. If its men had the courage to make vows, its women
had the conspicuous constancy that kept them. Guibert
of Nogent's father, in an ecstasy of terror, vowed on the
day of his child's laborious birth, that the infant, if a boy,
should be educated for the priesthood ; but the little fellow
had not been many months in the world when the infatuated
parent, charmed with his child's physical gifts, repented of
his promise, and would have broken it had not death inter-
posed between him and his weakness. One Christmas night
St. Odo's future father, a notably pious and upright man,
prayed that a son might be given him. The prayer was heard,
and when the boy was yet in the cradle, the father crept into
the nursery, took him up in his arms, and cried : ' St. Martin,
jewel of the priesthood, accept this my boy.* True to the
dedication, he gave the child a suitable training, and all went
well until Odo was fifteen years of age, when, captivated with
the boy's beauty and loth to see those divinely-moulded limbs
shrouded in a canon's frock, he made him doff the sacred
attire, and sent him off to the Duke of Aquitaine's court, to
hunt and hawk, and transform himself into the flower of
chivalry, if so it might be. But so it might not be. Odo
fell ill and was ill for three years, until the father, fairly beaten
by the gemma sacerdotum^ gave up the struggle, exclaiming.

MATERNAL HOPES. li

* O Saint Martin, you are as strict to exact my vow as I was
once delighted to make it. You are very ready to hear the
prayers of your clients, but you make them pay for your
patronage.' The fathers were weak, but the mothers were
heroines. It was the mothers who prayed for joyous dreams,
and who, when the dreams came, sought in simplicity and faith
for their interpretation, and they obeyed with hearts brimming
over with joy at the thought that for them, and for their
children, Heaven should have deigned to disclose its will

During the anxious weeks that foreran Anselm's birth,
Ermenberg, no doubt, waited in trembling hope for the con-
solation of a vision touching the destiny of her child ; like her
who in the previous age brought William of Dijon to the
birth, and who dreamt, and lo ! a Lady of royal mien and
in regal attire, who, bending her eyes upon the wonder-
stricken sleeper, illumined her right breast with an unearthly
splendour. But scarce had the heavenly Queen appeared
when troops of angels started into view, who drew the child
from the dreamer's arms, and carried it cradled in clouds of
light to heaven ; and she in her blissful terror could find no
other words than these : ' Blessed Mother of my Lord and
Saviour, I give him to you, take care of him ! ' So crying
she awoke ; the vision was not despised ; other presages suc-
ceeded, and in due course the two parents, * with one will and
one consent and with the favourable advice of all their kindred,
vowed the boy to the Lord Christ, Him to serve perpetually
in His house.'

But why cite instances } For any such presages as may
have been granted to Ermenberg during her early mother-
hood were surpassed a few years after Anselm's birth by a
dream or vision which, vouchsafed to the child himself, left
an indelible impress on his mind and on hers.

Ermenberg, herself as yet little more than a girl, loved to
speak to the child of that world on which her own hopes were
fixed. Too simple, it may be, or too humble, or too prudent,

12 THE BECCA DI NONA.

to perplex herself or him with the twofold meaning of that
word which, in her lingua romana, denoted at once the heaven
of heavens and the lustrous canopy of blue that overhung the
valley of Aosta, and seemed to rest on the everlasting hills
around, she spoke to him in simple phrase of heaven, and of
Him who dwells there ; and in speaking of God ventured to
represent Him under images suggested by what she herself
had seen or heard of all that was noblest and worthiest in this
world. Heaven was to her an ideal court, of which her own
domestic traditions had afforded her an image ; and in that
heaven dwelt God, ruling all things and sustaining all things.
So she taught her wondering child, in phrase suited to an
infancy too tender to grasp other and more mysterious
truths ; and he in his turn developed her teaching into the
conviction that God was willing His abode should be seen by
mortal eye. Looking about him, therefore, day by day, for
his best mountain way to heaven, he scanned the snowy dome
of Velan, the icy flanks of the Ruitors, the slippery pinnacles
of Combin, all the aerial heights that stand far off round
about the valley of Aosta ; but to his untutored vision none
was higher than the Becca di Nona, whose noontide shadow
lay every day across the valley down below the city, as npne
was nearer for his untried strength, and none, therefore, when
the happy moment should come, less likely to disappoint him.
For when at evening all the other mountain summits are
already eclipsed, the Becca di Nona ^ gleams bright in the fir-
mament ; and whereas they stand wrapped in eternal shrouds

' This mountain stands almost due south of Aosta. Its English name would
be Noon-tide Peak. Our word nooti is a corruption of nona, i.e. hora nona ;
the word having obtained its present meaning at a time when the ecclesiastical
office of nones was said by anticipation at midday, and not about three o'clock. I
have no doubt that the Becca di Nona received its name when it was customary
to ring the bells for the office I have mentioned, just as the sun stood over it ; and
my conviction is confirmed by the fact that the older name of the more distant
Mons Emilius, which stands a little more to the east, is pic de dix heures^ or ten
o'clock peak. When the unworthy designation Mons Emilius shall have been
supplanted by a better, the Valdostans could not do better than give their Becca
di Nona the alternative name of Mont St. Anselme,

THE PALACE OF GOD. 13

of snow and ice, time is year by year when the summit of
the Becca di Nona is for a few short weeks laid bare by the
autumnal warmth. The season was autumn when little
Anselm discovered this ; and, noting well that at the foot of
the mountain there lay a titanic ledge of rock which might
be of service to him, called then as now the Gargantua,
he nursed his divine ambition till one night as he slept the
summons came. He must climb the mountain and hasten
to the Court of God. He set forth, crossed the river, scaled
the Gargantua, where, grieved at finding the King's maidens
gathering in His harvest after too careless and too indolent
a fashion, he chid their sloth and resolved to lay charge
against them, but passed on forthwith ; for he must not delay.
So, leaving the region of corn and vineyard, he plunged
into the forest, and, threading his way upwards through
belts of pine and over lawns of turf and lavender, and scaling
precipitous blank rocks, had already reached the summit,
when lo ! heaven opened. The Invisible, in fashion as a
king, sat before him, throned in majesty, and with none near
Him but His seneschal, for the rest of the household had
been sent down into the world to reap His harvest. The
child crossed the threshold ; the Lord called him, and he
obeyed ; he approached, and sat down at the Lord's feet ;
was asked with royal grace and condescension who he was,
whence he had come, what he wanted ; answered the questions,
and was not afraid. Whereupon the King gave command to
the seneschal, who brought forth bread and set before him.
It was bread of an exceeding whiteness ; ^ and he ate it in the
Lord's presence. He ate it and was refreshed, and slept his
sleep, and awoke next morning at Aosta, and, remembering
his journey, or, rather, not so much remembering it, as retracing

• ^Pattern nitidis simurn.'' Thus in one of his eucharistic prayers he says,
* Panis candidissime^ . . . comedat te cor meum, etc' And in the Life of Arch-
bishop Oswald of York we read that once when that saint was saying mass his
guardian angel appeared and supplied him with a panis candidissimus.

14 THE BREAD OF GOD. .

it step by step, and incident by incident, flew to his mother's
knee, and told her all.

Ermenberg wept tears of consolation, but her joy was not
like his. Wonder what the vision might mean, wonder
whether it was in the body or out of the body that this had
happened, added bewilderment to her bliss. But Anselm's
was unalloyed ; he had been in paradise corporally, and with
corporal mouth had eaten the Bread of God.

Thus did Heaven set its mark on the child !

CHAPTER II.

ST. anselm's childhood.

In Lombardy, in Provence, in Burgundy, in Aquitaine, in the
comparatively small kingdom of France, it was, in the earlier
part of the eleventh century, expected of a gentleman that he
should be able to read. The fashion was already taking firm
root in Normandy, and the Germans were the only people
not deemed barbarous who were insensible to the reproach
conveyed by the word illiteratiis. Our 'illiterate' is now
no longer to educated Englishmen the equivalent of illiteratus;
but there can be no doubt, if the meaning assigned to it by
our yeomanry is to be regarded as traditional, that it at one
time described the man who had not learnt to read. The
day will soon come when by the * unlettered swain ' we shall
all mean the swain unversed in literature, and not, as once,
the swain who cannot spell. At the present moment no one
attaches a definite idea to the phrase ; a sure sign that its
meaning is undergoing change.

Ladies were not expected to emulate the learning of their
husbands and brothers. Thus Guibert of Nogent, when
writing of his mother, who was a woman of illustrious birth,
informs us, quite as a matter of course, that, although she
spoke like a bishop, she was an illiterata fosmina}

The scarcity of books rendered it impossible that there
should be much reading, whether studious or desultory. Yet

1 De Vita sud, lib. i. cap. xxix. But by the end of the century things were
different. The Countess Ida of Boulogne could read ; so could Matilda of
Tuscany ; so could the queen of our first Henry.

lb THE PSALTER.

we are told of a Duke of Aqultaine that he had a library in his
palace which he consulted when the leisure was allowed him,
and that he used to pore over the parchment during the long
nights of winter, until his head dropped, and toil gave way to
slumber.^ Conrad the Salic knew not letters, it is true ; ^ but he
was a German. Nevertheless Wippo, in a poem dedicated to
Conrad's son Henry the Black, complained that there was
only one country in the civilised world whose sons were
allowed to grow up illiterate and proposed that the Emperor
should make it compulsory on gentlemen that all their male
offspring should be taught to read after the example of their
sovereign.""'

The universal text-book was the Psalter. Robert the
Pious, King of France, read the Psalms daily, not indeed as a
literary but as a devotional exercise ; still, there can be no
doubt that his choice of the book was guided by the ease
which repeated perusals in boyhood had given him in reading
it.'' And we are told of a pious Thuringian, who, resigning
the belt of knighthood and assuming the religious tonsure,
soon became so famous for his expositions of Holy Scripture
that secular clergymen, not allowed by the rule of the order
to enter the chapter-house, would hang about its open
windows so as to hear his sermons, that he had learned to

* Ademari Engolismensis Historian, lib. iii. § 54.

2 * Quanquam enim litteras ignoraret tamen omnem clerum . . . prudenter
instituit.' Wipponis Vita Conradi Salici, § De Itinere Regis per Regna.

* . * Soils Teutonicis vacuum vel turpe videtur

Ut doceant aliquem nisi clericus accipiatur.
Sed, rex docte, jube cunctos per regna doceri ;
Ut tecum regnet sapientia partibus istis.'

— Panegyricus Wipponis.

Otho the Great a century before achieved the astounding feat of learning to
read after he had reached man's estate ; and we are informed that he not only read
but understood : * Ingenium ei admodum mirandum ; nam post mortem Edidis
reginse cum autem nesciret litteras in tantum didicit ut pleniter libros legere et
intelligere noverit.' — Widikundi R, G,S.

* ' Eloquentise tantum incumbens ut nullus laberetur dies quin legeret psalte-
rium.' — Helgaldi Floriacensis Epitonia VHcc Koberti Regis,

CLERICAL GUARDIANS. 17

read nothing beyond the Psalms.' The tradition was an old
one ; for in the ninth century such few boys as were at that
time sent to school to obtain some little learning before going
to court and entering on military service, were made to learn
their alphabet with the one definite aim of being able to
read that inspired text-book.^

Such children, however, as were destined for the clerical
profession must not only read, but sing the Psalter ; and such
as were to be monks must know every word of it by heart.
But with these latter we need not now trouble ourselves ; for
little Anselm was destined for the white habit of the secu-
lar canon, not for the more sober garb of the sons of St.
Benedict.

It was the custom of the age that parents who destined a
child for dignified clerical preferment should entrust him to
the care of a nutritor — of a guardian, that is to say, or
governor, who was to have the entire charge of him, and train
him for his profession. And if pages and maids of honour
were the merest boys and girls upon their introduction to the
courts of princes, it was in veriest childhood that the clergymen
of the generation that was to be were transplanted into the
household of some great prelate or high-born canon, under
whose direction they were perhaps as carefully tended, and
certainly as sedulously whipped, as if they had remained
under the parental roof.

The reason of this banishment of the little churchmen of
the eleventh century from their own homes to those of great
ecclesiastics is obvious. The nurseries of the age were not
adorned with those incentives to literary culture which are in

' * Nam litteras omnino frater ille nisi tantiim psalmos non didicit, et tamen
omnem rationem et intellectum evangelii legis et prophetarum et historiarum
quoque . . . mirabiliter percepit. ' — Vita S. Godehardi Hildesheimensis, auct.
Wolfero.

'■* ' Qui . . . studiis litterarum applicatus est . . . ut decurso psalterio mox
saecularibus exercitiis erudiretur.' — S. Odottis de Viid S. Geraldi Comiiis Auriliac,
lib. i. § 4.

VOL. I. C

1 8 ECCLESIASTICAL SCHOOLMASTERS.

these days presumed by their presence to stimulate the mental
activity of the rising race — such as pictures for meek-souled
boys of babes in the wood buried by robins, and, for the iron-
hearted, of giant-killers blazoned in bright colours and looking
terrible. Nor had the alphabet as yet become a plaything ;
for there was not a nurse in Christendom, and scarcely a
mother, who would have known how to make it serviceable.
And since letters are useless without a literary language, how,
if the only language spoken by father, mother, and domestics
have not a literature, shall the child profit by them ? For we
should greatly err were we to imagine that either the lingua
sclavonica, the lingua saxonica, or the lingua teutojiica, was
regarded by the scholars of the tenth and eleventh centuries as
other than a barbarous patois. Even the lingua ro7nana had
not as yet a literature. Hence none but Latinists, whether of
less or greater ability, would presume to take charge of an
abecedarius ; and ecclesiastics were by an inevitable conse-
quence the sole teachers even of little children.

Little children, indeed ! For we are gravely informed that
St Leo IX, was already four years old when his mother sent
him to Berthold Bishop of Toul to be educated.^ And
Meinhard, the saint of Einsiedeln, would seem to have been
somewhat younger than even that when his father, thinking it
high time he should learn the alphabet, carried him away to
the unfrequented island ^ of Sulgen, and confided him to the
care of a monk who lived there. The good man was a kins-
man, and gladly took charge of the child, who is described as
an infantulus. This was in the days of Charlemagne. It was
towards the end of the ninth century that St. Odo, of Cluny,
whilst as yet a mere infantulus d lacte depulsus, was sent off
to a good priest, who treated him very tenderly, no doubt,
but not more so than so tender an infancy required ; ^ and St.

> Acta Sanctorum Bolland., April 19.
2 Vita S. Meginradi; Mabillon, Acta SS., see. iv. p. ii.

' ' Infantulus a lacte depulsus et . . . cunis exemptus cuidam sacerdoti
longiiis eommanenti traditur nutriendus.' — Nalgadi Vita S. Odonis Cluniac.

THE SINGING LESSON. 19

Robert, the founder of the Cistercians, born some sixteen or
seventeen years before St. Anselm, was sent to school as soon
as he was weaned.^

The little ward was no sooner under the roof of his
nutritor than he was henceforth a litteris tradiUis, a litteris
applicatus^ a litteris mancipatus. Going day by day, in at
least many instances, to the primary school of some neigh-
bouring monastery, he endured all its traditional woes until,
having perused the text of the Psalter to the satisfaction of
his teachers, he reached the stage at which children who
aspired to military service were allowed to stop, and it became
his lot to encounter the more poignant griefs of the singing
lesson. What these were may be learnt from the subjoined
extract from an unpublished manuscript preserved in the
public library at Evreux.

It should be premised that in a certain Cluniac establish-
ment, dependent upon the priory of La Charite, the monks
wished the Feast of St. Nicholas to be celebrated with the
solemnities used at Cluny, and requested that the saint's his-
tory might be sung, not read ; that the prior refused ; that the
monks remonstrated ; that the dispute waxed hot and strong ;
and that the obstinate superior punished his refractory sub-
jects, and even caused them to be beaten with a scopa, or
birch-rod. This exhausted the patience of St. Nicholas.
* Next night, when the prior had gone to sleep, behold St.
Nicholas stood before him with a rod in his hand, and
accosted him with these words, " You have had your monks
beaten on my account ; you shall see what will happen to you
for that — Sing ! " Then the saint began the antiphon which
commences O Christi pietas. But the prior refused to sing

' ' Expletis igitur diebus mulier peperit filium quern ablactatum tradidit
litterarum studiis imbuendum.' — Vitc(, S. Roberti, Cisterc. Fundatoris^ cap. i.

To remove all doubt as to the meaning of ablactatus, I will add the following
from the Life of St, Odulf :— ' Porro ubi desiit ad matema pendere ubera litte-
rarum studiis traditur et Sanctis et Deo devotis hominibus, ut at illis canonica reli-
gione imbueretur commendatus est.'

20 AN ECHO FROM THE SINGING LESSON.

after him ; whereupon he began to give him a sound flogging.
.... Quid multa ? He kept on beating him, and " learn-
ing " ^ him, and singing the antiphon over and over again
until he should sing it right through from beginning to end
without a mistake. Now when the monks who were in their
beds all round the dormitory heard the prior sobbing, and
singing the aforesaid antiphon between his sobs, they were
sore amazed . . . but none of them ventured to awake him,
for they wanted to see what the end of it would be ! , So when
he had at last succeeded in singing it well and from memory, all
alone, the whole of it, he awoke ; and perceiving the brethren
standing round about his bed with lamps in their hands, as
he did not wish to speak to them then, he made signs to
them to go to bed again, and spent the remainder of his night
without sleeping — he was in such pain and terror. But when
it was morning, and the time came for speaking,^ he called

' * Discendo. '

2 That is to say, on their assembling in the chapter-house after prime. Silence
between compline and prime is enjoined by the Rule of St. Benedict (cap. xhi.).
• Exeuntibus a corapletoriis nulla sit licentia denuo cuiquam loqui aliquid. Quod
si inventus fuerit quisquam praevaricari hanc taciturnitatis regulam graviori vin-
dictae subjaceat : excepte si necessitas hospitum supervenerit, aut forte abbas
aliquid jusserit. Quod tamen et ipsum cum summa gravitate et moderatione
honestissime fiat.'

It vi^as customary in some, if not all, monasteries, at the end of compline to say
these words : ' Pone, Domine, custodiam ori meo, et ostium circumstantije labiis
meis.'

The Cluniac monks were famous for a scrupulous observance of this rule.
Thus there is a story in the Life pf St. Odo of a Cluniac monk who on a journey
to Rome allowed a horse belonging to his monastery to be stolen rather than
break the rule by raising an alarm. And William of Malmesbury tells us of
Lanzo, Abbot of St. Pancras, at Lewes, that, when racked with sufferings which
left him no respite and yielded to no expedient, he refused to utter a syllable
between compline and prime. ' Nunquam tamen noctibus locutus ; rogantibus
fratribus ut silentium solveret, non adquievit . . . quod nunquam postquam
monachicum habitum accepisset ^ completorio exiens usque ad sequentis die!
primam locutus fuisset. '— W. M. De Gest. Reg. AngL p. 675.

While on this subject I will take the opportunity of saying that I think
Mabillon must have been mistaken in his interpretation of a passage in one of the
Lives of St. Gerald of Corbie : * Aliquando post completam coram altari se
effundens in omnium rationum effectus usque ad singultus verba inter-
rumpentes . . . tandem laxata vox invenit iter. . . . Et gemebundus rediit ad

r

THE TRIVIUM.

them together, and said : " The Lord have mercy on you,
brethren, for getting me such a flogging last night. Go, sing
the history. as you want, for, willing or nilling, I suppose I
must let you have your way, lest I get another such flogging
as I did last night, and perhaps worse.'" 'Another such
flogging and perhaps worse ! '. What a plaintive echo from
the singing class !

The little schoolboy, concurrently with his lessons in sing-
ing, was taught to write. His first efforts were made, not on
parchment by means of a pen, but with a style upon a slate
of wood, perhaps of ivory, covered with wax. Here, too,
must he be cautious ; particularly must he remember the
difl"erence between his p's and his q's ; for he wrote from dic-
tation, and must have his wits about him. There is a dif-
ference between dictare and scribere\ dictare denotes the
writing upon tablets, scribere the writing upon parchment,
or the copying out of what has been submitted to correc-
tion on the wax. But more of this in another place. Enough
to know that the three subjects taught in an elementary
school in the eleventh century were not reading, writing, and
arithmetic ; but reading, writing, and the singing of the
Psalms to their proper tones.

Children who had learnt thus much, and no more, were
termed scholares or scholars in the sense of the word still
kept up among our rural poor, as when they say, * I am no
scholar,' meaning, * I cannot write ' or * I cannot read.' They
* knew their letters,' were lettered cr litter ati, and were the
precursors of our literates. Our masters of arts, on the other

lectum suum, cumque ibi sederet . . . miserabili voce clamavit. . . . Sicque
liberatus laudavit liberatorem libera voce.' Post coinpletam can scarcely mean
post completormm, for Gerald would not have chosen such a time for pi-aying
aloud ; and no good monk would have made an audible thanksgiving for no
matter what favour during the interval of obligatory silence. Now inasmuch as
monks sat up in bed for their mid-day siesta, the fact that Gerald was sitting, not
lying, suggests the insertion of the word missam. He began to pray after mass,
post completam missam.

22 THE QUADRIVIUM.

hand, had their forerunners in those who, passing from the
elementary school of reading, writing, and singing, were in
the schola grainmatica, or grammar school, set to enter upon
the study of the seven liberal arts. These were divided into
two groups : the trivium, which embraced grammar, rhetoric
and dialectic ; and the quadrivium, which consisted of music,
that is to say, scientific music, arithmetic or the science
of numbers, geometry, and astronomy, A man who had
mastered these seven arts was a homo doctus.

The schoolboy of the eleventh century who was required
to learn grammar — by which, of course, was meant Latin
grammar — had as great need as hitherto of his style and
tablets. The master or grammaticus read what he wished to
teach from a manuscript copy of Priscian, of Donatus, perhaps
of Alcuin ; and his reading, lection, lesson or lecture — what-
ever we please to call it — was by the process termed dictatio
inscribed by the pupil on his sheet of wax, and thence by
repetitio or frequent perusal transferred to memory. Hence
our catachrestic phrase, ' to repeat a lesson!

Thus were the Latin accidence and syntax learnt ; nor
can there be a doubt that a great deal of time was spent in
declining nouns, conjugating verbs, and reciting rules. There
was plenty of parsing too ; and, what may perhaps excite
some surprise, plenty of composition both in prose and verse.
For, indeed, except for the altered condition of institutions
well stocked with printed books, we may feel sure that the
customs of our own public schools at the close of the last
century represented with a general fidelity the practice of
earlier ages. 'Apply yourself,' said St. Anselm in his old
age, 'apply yourself with all your power to declining and
conjugating, and to learning your grammar well ; and
practice composition, but more in prose than in verse.' ' Try
to know your grammar well ; get into the habit of com-
posing something every day, especially in prose ; and do not
grow too fond of an involved style, but aim at a clear and

A CHILD'S GRIEFS. 23

logical one. Always speak in Latin, except when obliged to
do otherwise." ^

St. Anselm's own latinity was so lucid and concise, that
we may well believe the literary educators of his childhood to
have possessed that rare skill which leaves little to choose
between the instructor's pleasure in teaching and the pupil's
delight in learning. But if we trust that he was spared much
at least of the inf audits dolor which fell to the general lot of
his contemporaries of the schoolroom, we must not imagine
that he escaped unscathed ; for the allusions in the literature
of the age to that ensign of magisterial power which is now
fast lapsing into the realm of myth, are such as to render it
incredible that any, even the most favoured, can have been
entirely spared its infliction ; and if the reflections appended
to the anecdote with a notice of which this chapter will
conclude may be taken in evidence together with what
Eadmer tells us of St. Anselm's endeavours to mitigate the
severity practised by the best of men amongst his contem-
poraries, there can be no room to doubt that he was in his
childhood made to suffer even as others. What sort of suffer-
ing it was we learn from Guibert of Nogent, whose private
tutor, the kindest-hearted and best of men, treated him with
a severity scarcely credible but by those who are fortunate
enough to have time to spare for reading the whole of his
account. Here are the concluding passages : * So sincere
was my return of his affection, notwithstanding the many
stripes my skin carried from his numerous and gratuitous
castigations, that I forgot all his roughness, and paid him the
homage, not of my fears, but of a love deep as the very
marrow of my being. And my mother and my master, ob-
serving that I rendered due respect to each, made not a few

* Ep. iv, 31, 114. The speaking of Latin in our university-schools and
senate-houses is the perpetuation of a custom which lapse of time has abolished
elsewhere, partly, perhaps, in consequence of the elevation of English to the
dignity of a literary language. But I imagine that Latin was usually spoken in
our schools as late as the end of the sixteenth century.

24 A MOTHER'S TEARS.

experiments on my fidelity, to see if I would presume to
prefer one to the other. . . .

'At last an occasion arose, alike unprecedented in its
occurrence and unmistakable in its issue. One day I had
had a flogging in the school-room ; the school-room had been
made out of a parlour in our house. My studies, such as
they were, having come to an end, as it grew late in the
evening, I approached my mother's knee, still mindful of my
very severe, but quite unmerited chastisement. She began,
as usual, by asking me if I had been punished during the day.
I promptly replied in the negative, not wishing to look like
a teller of tales out of school ; when, will I or nill I, she
pulls off my under garment, which they call a subucula, that
is to say, my shirt, and beholds my poor little back livid
from the switching of the birch-twigs, the skin in ridges all
over. The bowels of her compassion yearned, for I was a
delicate little fellow, and had been rather too roughly used,
no doubt. She trembled exceedingly, and her eyes brimmed
over with grief, as she exclaimed, " Never, never shall you be
a clergyman. Scholar or no scholar, no longer shall you pay
like this for scholarship." Whereupon I turned round, looked
her full in the face as reproachfully as I possibly could, and
replied, " If I have to die for it, I intend to go on learning,
and I shall be a clergyman." She tried to bribe me with the
promise of a splendid suit of armour, and all the rest of it,
would I only consent to become a knight ; but I was not to
be bribed.' ^

Thus victory declared for the grammatiais. He was an
incompetent teacher, no doubt. Whilst, however, we make
every allowance for his incompetency, we must remember
that he would be unlikely to chastise a high born and deli-
cately constituted child with what he in his heart deemed an
excessive severity, and that he can scarcely have far exceeded

' Ven. Guiberti, Novigent., De Viid sud, lib. i.

¥

SEVERE DISCIPLINE OF CHILDREN. 25

the custom of his age. Precisely so. He represented a
universal tradition, which made whipping as necessary to
the formation of a child's character as blood-letting to the
health of persons of mature age. The tradition was an
old one ; for have we not all heard the story of St. Isidore
of Seville, who in his childhood suffered so terribly from
whippings administered by his elder brother as to run away
from him in sheer terror, but who repented himself and
came back to be whipped more cruelly than ever, if so be
whipping was to make a man of him .? It was an old one ;
for St. Benedict in his Rule enjoins that a false note or
a false quantity in the Divine office is to be atoned by casti-
gation.^ It was an old one ; for St. Paul seems never to
have heard of a child who escaped : ' Quis enim est filius
quem non corripit pater.?' (Heb. xii. 7). St. Anselm himself,
when Prior of Le Bee, notwithstanding his unrivalled sweet-
ness and repose of nature, and an affectionateness that has
almost passed into a proverb, refused not to correct with rods
a lad whom he was educating into saintliness, and whom he
loved with a love unparalleled in history for its depth, for its
purity, and for the sympathy with which it was returned.
And the monks of Cluny, than whom a more respectable
body of men never existed — no, never— thus describe the
general practice in their monasteries : — ' At nocturns, and at
all other hours, if a boy makes a mistake in singing a psalm
or anything else, if he falls asleep, or, in short, does that
which he ought not to do, no matter what, he is taken to
task at once, and without a moment's delay, as soon as he
gets into the schoolroom, is stripped of frock and cowl, and
either by the prior or by his own master birched with a
rod provided for the purpose.* ^

* ' Si quis dum pronuntiat psalmum, responsorium, aut antiphonam, vel
lectionem, fallitur .... vindictse subjaceat. Infantes vero pro tali culpa
vapulent.' — S. P. Benedicti Regiila, cap. xlv.

2 Adalrici Con suet u dines Cluntacenses, lib. iii. cap. viii.

26 SEVERE SELF-DISCIPLINE.

This extract — and others like it might be quoted— may
perhaps throw an unexpected light upon a usage which the
unwary student of the middle ages is tempted to regard as
barbarous. Severe it was, as indeed it was meant to be ; but
it was meant to be passionless, though strict ; and though
inevitable, as the good men thought who inflicted it, yet
always just. Hence parents, the best and tenderest of parents,
were only too ready to subject their children to it ; and these
latter, knowing only too well of Whose providential govern-
ment the men they revered thought it a copy, responded to
its sobering influence with a return of love not altogether
unlike theirs who have been sanctified and sweetened by the
afflicting hand of God. ' Ego quos amo, arguo et castigo.'

Thus we are told of our own St. Hugh of Lincoln, that,
committed when not seven years of age to the care of some
canons regular near Grenoble, 'the pedagogue's scourge in
such wise plied upon his infantile corpusculunty and in such
wise did the shackles of discipline restrain in him the motions
of boyhood, that his virtues outstripped his vices' — poor
child — * and that his entire life from its morning to its decline
\a sui ortu usque ad occasuni] was one perpetual martyrdom.'
* In good truth,' used the saint to say, ' I never meddled with
the joys of this world ; I never learnt to joke ; I could never
join in sports.' For an aged canon, the very man who seems
to have administered the whippings, conceived a special
interest in him, and, persuading him to have no part in such
vanities, prepared him for a loftier destiny than that which
awaited his thoughtless schoolfellows. ' My dearest child,' he
used to say, ' do not let yourself be led away by all this silly
and unmeaning levity. Let them alone. These pursuits are
not in keeping with your destiny.' And then he would add,
' Little Hugh, little Hugh, I am training you for Christ ; to
play the fool is no work of yours.' (* Hugonete, Hugonete,
ego te Christo nutrio ; jocari non est tuum.')

Anyhow, the ideal wielders of all this rigid severity were,

ANSELM SENT TO SCHOOL. 27

in their turn, models of self-chastisement and self-control ;
and, however unhappily it may in this or that instance have
been exaggerated or misapplied, it was not incompatible
with a very deep and earnest love. For it evoked love, and
with love an emulation of the self-discipline, the self-restraint,
the minute and conscientious watchfulness of men who dared
to be merciless to their own flesh. Thus little Hugh as time
passed longed for something severer than the canonical life,
ran away to the Grande Chartreuse, took the habit there,
and eventually established the first Carthusian monastery in
England.

But enough of this. Suffice it on the one hand to know
that this terrible discipline was fashioned to a passionless
ideal ; suffice it on the other to remember that grave historians
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries seem to have regarded
the sufferings of a school-boy under the ferule of his master
as the very acme of human woe. And we may well believe it ;
for, if no less careful a speaker than St. Anselm himself used
in his old age to protest that rather than be Archbishop of
Canterbury he would prefer to be a little boy in a monastery
school quailing under the master's rod, the declaration was
deemed by Eadmer so strange, and antecedently so unlikely
to have been made in earnest by any man who knew what he
was saying, that he has thought it necessary to call God to
witness that the Archbishop had indeed made it, and that
he had himself heard him make it over and over again in
most sober earnest.^

Let us now, therefore, provided with some general notion
of the education of children in St. Anselm's time, trace the
course of his, guided by such special information as has sur-
vived the accidents of time.

He can scarcely have been more than three years old when
he dreamed the dream recorded in the preceding chapter;

* * Deum tester me ssepe ilium sub veritatis testimonio audire protestantem quod
liberius vellet.' — Vita, lib. ii. cap. i.

28 ANSELM'S USHER.

and the awe with which that dream inspired his parents and
kinsmen must have been sensibly enhanced by the desire
which the child soon expressed of being allowed to go to
school. Ermenberg, knowing what was meant by going to
school, resisted with all the arts and artifices of a fond mother ;
but, from whatever cause, and for whatever reason, her unwill-
ingness was made to yield ; and little Anselm was transferred
to the home of one or other of her brothers, Lambert and
Folcerad, who, besides being godfathers ^ to the boy, now
began to share in his behalf the responsibilities of nutritor}
Day by day he went to school — what school cannot easily be
determined ; but on the whole it is likely that, as the colle-
giate church of St. Ours and the cathedral were only pro-
vided with institutions for the training of choristers, he was
entrusted to the educational skill of some Benedictine
fathers, who had a monastery within the city not far from
its southern wall. Morning by morning he set forth, accom-
panied, as became his rank, by a clericus^ one of those
ill-paid but not always ill-taught gentlemen in minor orders,
who, though sometimes termed clericuli in sport, were found
to be very useful personages in the palaces of kings and
the higher nobility. Evening by evening the little fellow
returned in charge of the same attendant, to prepare his
lessons for the morrow. And if the modest usher ere day
declined alleviated the drudgery of the task in hand, he had
when the morrow came a slight burden enough to carry — at
first an abecedaries, and later on the wax-lined diptych of box-
wood or ivory with its accompanying stylus. Unless, indeed,

* He calls himself their godson in Ep. i. i8.

^ St. Anselm's is not the only case in the eleventh century of a child whose
sponsors were charged with this additional duty. Thus he himself {Ep. iii. io6)
says to one of his correspondents, ' Si tota vestra congregatio . . . consilio
reverendorum episcoporum Ivonis Carnotensis et Galonis Parisiensis, qui patres
vesirifuerunt et vos nutrivertmt, vos instanter elegerit.' And Archbishop Halinard,
of Lyons, was his godfather's nutritus.

^ Thus St. Leo IX. in his childhood has his clericus. We read in his Life.
*Adalberonem suum clericum tunc tantummodo ejus assidentem lectulo allocutus.'

ANSELM'S TUTOR.

29

custom required even a child of Anselm's rank to do as
humbler schoolboys did, and carry his own tabulce slung by a
strap over the left shoulder and resting on the right hip ; but
this is not likely.^

After he had for a year or two pursued his studies in the
elementary school, Lambert and Folcerad confided him to
the care of a private tutor, a kinsman perhaps of their own,
and certainly of his, and, therefore, a kinsman either of
Ermenberg's or of Gundulf's. His name has not been recorded,
an omission all the more provoking as we know that other
godsons of Anselm's uncles had a magister named Lambert,'*
who gave lessons when Anselm was approaching middle life,
and who may quite be the Lambertus levita of a document
drawn up in the year 1040 at Aosta, and still extant. I
suspect, indeed, that Lambert the deacon, Lambert the tutor
of other young gentlemen after Anselm, and Anselm's own
magister, were one and the same person.

Be this as it may, the little hoy's tutor, whatever his
name, had probably been selected in virtue of that clearness
and accuracy of thought and phrase which characterised a
school of teachers recently sprung into existence in the
neighbouring Lombardy. Their coryphcsus, their exemplar,
and their guide was the illustrious and incomparable Lanfranc
— Lanfranc, the grandest scholar of his age, its admiration and
its envy ; and it is no slight praise of the eleventh century
that it should have known how to envy and admire such an
intellect as his.

It would seem that for some fifteen or twenty years
before the period of Anselm's birth Lanfranc had dazzled
Italy by an acumen without precedent in its Christian
annals ; had given a new character to the jurisprudence of

* ' Duas solum tabellas manu bajulans, scribendi officio aptissimas, fabrili opere
ita connexas ut possent patefieri non tamen disjungi, quibus scholastici dextro
femore solent wiV—Vita S. Odonis auctore Joanne (Mabillon, Acta SS., Saec. V.).

•^ Ep. i. 17.

30 LANFRANCS INFLUENCE AT PAVIA.

Lombardy, and had informed and moulded the choicest
minds not of Lombardy alone, nor of Italy, but of almost
every country in Europe, by the accuracy, the vigour, the
grace, and the amplitude of a scholarship which the citizens
of Pavia long accounted, and still account, one of the
proudest titles to renown which their annals have preserved
to them. But Pavia was well known to Gundulf, kins-
men of whom had worn the iron crown within its walls ;
Pavia was in all probability, so long, at least, as Lanfranc
flourished there, a nursery of classical tutors for, at any rate,
the best families in the valleys and plains which were watered
by the Dora Baltea, the Ticino, and the Po ; and to have
heard Lanfranc— as the phrase then ran— in his lecture-room
at Pavia, constituted an advantage of even comparatively
greater value than in these days it is to have had the special
assistance of the best of private tutors in the more accurate
and more critical of our own universities. And when we
remember that St. Anselm, before he reached the age of
thirty, was, in at least some departments of learning, deemed
scarcely second even to Lanfranc, and that the desire of
making Lanfranc's acquaintance had been his principal mo-
tive for travelling from the Alps to Normandy, we may well
believe his earlier studies to have been directed by some
teacher from Pavia, who knew how to recommend to him
the genius and the talents of that illustrious scholar.

But not only did Anselm's birth entitle him to a private
tutor ; he seems, when as yet quite a boy, to have held a
rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy which rendered it seemly
that he should no longer be sent out to school. There can
be little doubt that he was a canon as early as his four-
teenth year, and I suspect he had worn the habit from the
early age of seven. He could sing the Psalms, and was old
enough to receive the tonsure ; well, therefore, might he be
a member either of the cathedral chapter or of that of St.
Ours ; or even of each. Lambert and Folcerad appear to

^F^ THE BOY CANON. 31

^K have been pluralists,^ and their nephew may also have en-
^ joyed double preferment He certainly was a canon of the
cathedral church in early manhood, but it does not therefore
follow that he had never occupied a stall in St. Ours. On
the contrary, destined, as he was, for the mitre, nothing would
be more likely than that the first canonry to be had in either
church should be conferred upon him, child though he were.
Anyhow, the junior canon of St. Ours in the year 1040 was
an Anselm. Why should not that Anselm be ours }

If so, then as canon of St. Ours he wore a little white
habit, white from head to foot ; as canon of St. Ours he day
by day took his place in his stall and sang the divine praises.

• There are two documents in the Historic Patrice Monumenta which not only
confirm the conjecture which I had made long before seeing them, that Lambert
and Folcerad were canons, but render it probable that they had canonries in both
churches. The deed of exchange between Bishop Burchard and a certain Frecio,
executed in the year 1025, has a group of six signatures, which must be those of the
six canons of the cathedral. They are Guntardus, Lambertus, Folcho, Vulgrinus,
Volfordus, Ugo. If I could only be sure that the third of these names should be
Folceradus and not Folcho, and nothing is less unlikely, then I should have no
doubt that each of Ermenberg's brothers was a member of the cathedral chapter
in the year 1025.

The other is a deed of gift from Humbert the White-handed, in 1040, to the
canons of St. Ursus, and is attested by five names, those, no doubt, of members
of the chapter ; namely, Bovo, Boso, Folceradus, Arnulfus, Anselmus. Now
there were six canonries, and I suspect the missing name is Lambert's.

Light may yet break upon the subject ; meanwhile we must be content with
the probability that Lambert and Folcerad were pluralists. Two provostships
and twelve canonries might well invite plurality in a family like Ermenberg's ;
for I cannot too strongly insist upon it that Ermenberg's was the ruling family of
the villa and civitas, the 'city and county,' of Aosta. One of Ermenberg's
brothers was Bishop of Aosta ; another of them was his coepiscopus ; and, as none
but persons of birth, and high birth, might hold the twelve canonries, half of
which would seem to have been founded by her collateral ancestor, Bishop
Anselm L, her eldest son would naturally receive the first of them that offered.
The reader will find the subject of Ermenberg's pedigree pretty fully discussed in
the Appendix.

Of course the junior canon of St. Ursus in 1040 may have been another
Anselm ; but our little friend was unquestionably a clericus as early as his four-
teenth year, and there would seem to be no reason why he should not have
resembled St. Odilo, who was made a canon of Brioude '■inter ipsa primordia.''

It was, however, as a canon of the cathedral church— unless, indeed, like St.
Oswald, he had higher preferment still — that he was known upon his arrival at
Le Bee. The Ecdesia Augustana of Gilbert Crispin can only be the cathedral.

32 TUTORIAL ZEAL.

The Church of St. Ours is at this moment in many respects
as it was then ; but eight centuries can have witnessed no
loveUer sight within its walls than that of the innocent white-
robed child thus engaged. Surely the listening angels can
have had no sweeter task than to improve his timorous
efforts and carry them all musical to heaven.

But we must leave the choir for the school-room.

Tutor and pupil began their labours with equal zeal ; but
the zeal of the former was greater than his discretion. He
had been too well taught, and was himself too good a teacher,
to exaggerate the customary rigours of the school-room, and
may even have relaxed them in no inconsiderable degree.
But he had so good a pupil, that, bent upon converting the
thoughtful, meditative, ever- reasoning child into a prodigy
of learning, he entered upon a course of discipline which
prudence should have warned him was for such a child the
cruellest that could be contrived — a course of discipline in
comparison with which the purple lashes on Guibert of
Nogent's little back were very mercy. Guibert, when his
case was at the worst, could, at any rate, look his mother
in the face and say, * If I die of my whippings, I mean to
be whipped ; ' but, when Anselm's was at the worst, the
brightest star of the eleventh century had been well-nigh
quenched in its rising. The infatuated pedagogue confined
him to the house in the fond hope of forcing him by inces-
sant application into a premature intellectual ripeness ; and,
deeming it waste of time that so active a mind should be
allowed to relax a tension to which it was only too prone by
temperament, kept him prisoner over his books, and paid little
heed to the attenuated features and throbbing pulse of his
willing victim, and to all the other indications of an over-
wrought brain. At last the brain refused to work, and the
precocious little student felt as if reason were toppling from
her throne. The uncles, appealed to in this emergency, tried
all the rude skill then in fashion, but to no purpose, and were

MATERNAL PRUDENCE. 33

fain in their perplexity to send him home to Ermenberg.
Here fresh alarms awaited the poor child. He had for-
gotten the bustle and pomp of that princely home ; the at-
tentions of men-at-arms, of retainers, of lacqueys, of servile
and officious dependants, terrified him ; he sought solitude,
shunned the looks of others, and, when father and mother
plied him with solicitous tendernesses, turned away a flushed
face and said nothing. On one such occasion, Ermenberg,
unable to control herself, cried out, * Ah me, I have lost my
child ! ' But even in this extremity her characteristic pru-
dence was not at fault. How she governed her own conduct
we are not told ; but she gave peremptory orders to her
servants that the child was to be allowed to do whatever he
pleased, thwarted in nothing, and implicitly obeyed in all
that he should choose to require. Her injunctions were
respected ; time and care did the rest.^

In future years it was remarked that never had nurse like
Anselm entered an infirmary ; that he possessed a tact and
tenderness surpassing woman's. Ermenberg had taught him
the science of the sick-room.

^ See Appendix.

VOL. I.

34

CHAPTER III.

ST. ANSELM'S BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH.

Had Anselm come into the world a century later than he did,
he would have found in the canons of St. Ours a cloistered
brotherhood resembling in its essential features a community
of monks ; for precisely a hundred years after his birth that
corporation relinquished the secular life to enter upon one
ordered after a religious model ; and the antiquary who now
treads the cloister ^ which their feet once wore, will find upon
the capital of one of the exquisite little pillars of its colonnade
this inscription : —

Anno ab Incarnatione Domini m.cxxx.iii, in hoc claustro
regularis vita incepta est.

But though Anselm did not live long enough to witness
the reform of that society of which he had, not improbably,
been a member in his boyhood, he may have remotely contri-
buted to the change both by early example and by exhorta-
tions addressed at a subsequent period to some of its members.
These shall engage our attention presently ; for it is first neces-
sary to recall the fact that the secular clergy of the west, at
least in its higher ranks, underwent a most signal change for
the better during the latter half of the eleventh century.

In the year 1063 Pope Alexander II., well noting the
symptoms of amelioration for which good men had long
sighed, summoned, in terms partly of command, partly of
invitation, partly of entreaty, all such corporations of secular

> The cloister of St. Ours at Aosta reminds one of that of Saint-Sauveur at
Aix-en- Provence, and of Saint-Trophime at Aries.

THE IDEAL CANONICATE. 35

canons as were not infected with the graver evils of the
time to take their meals together, to sleep in a common
dormitory, and to attempt a general approximation to the
apostolic ideal of a life in community ; ^ some five-and-twenty
years later monasteries of canons regular were already scat-
tered thick over the face of Christendom ; ^ and early in
the twelfth century secular ecclesiastics, not of the highest
grades only, but of all, by their response to the cry of
Norbert from his wilderness in the Vosges, gave ample proof
that their ancient lethargy was coming to an end.^

But the earlier half of the eleventh century had inherited
a universal indolence ; and when Anselm was a child se-
cular canons, like his uncles Lambert and Folcerad, were
blind, or all but blind, to the ideal which required that
such as they should possess nothing which they could call
their own, but have all things in common ; an ideal which St.
Augustine had endeavoured, but with indifferent success, to
maintain in its proper lustre amongst his clergy ; ^ but an
ideal which as age succeeded age had faded languidly from
sight, till at length a college of canons was the merest synonym
for a company of tonsured gentlemen of all ages down to very
childhood who owed their dignity to birth, to purchase, or to
favour, and who regarded the revenues of a deanery or a
canonry as so much private income to be expended, free of all

' *Et prsecipientes statuimus ut hi prsedictorum ordinum qui iisdem pras-
decessoribus nostris obedientes castitatem servaverint juxta ecclesias quibus
ordinati sunt sicut oportet religiosos clericos simul manducent et dormiant et
quicquid eis ab ecclesia competit communiter habeant. Et rogantes monemus ut
ad apostolicam communem vitam summopere pervenire studeant quatenus per-
fectionem cum his consecuti qui centesimo fructu ditantur in coelesti patria
mereantur adscribi.' See Baronius, Annales, s. a. 1063.

2 This, at least, is a fair deduction from letters of Urban II. written in the
year 1089.

' 'Norbertus . . . vineam plantavit quae . . . jam implevit terram,' — Her-
manni de Mirac. S. M. Lattdtcn., iii. § i.

* ' Me hoc noverit charitas vestra dixisse fratribus meis qui mecum manent ut
quicunque habet aliquid aut vendat aut eroget pauperibus aut donet aut commune
illud faciat. . . . Ecce in conspectu Dei et vestro muto consilium.'— S. Aug.
Sermo de Moribtis Clericorum.

D 2

36 REAL CANONICATES.

restraints, and free of all conditions not imposed upon men of
the world in general.^

But it would seem as if St. Anselm, when as yet a mere
boy, was already anticipating that great reform which he was
not to witness for many years to come ; for before he had
completed his fourteenth year ^ he was debating within himself
how best to fashion his life to the Divine will, and, after what
certainly appears to have been an impartial and adequate
comparison of the different modes of human converse open to
him, came to the conclusion that the monastic state was the
most fitting. To do this he must have set side by side in
the field of mental vision the monastic state and the canonical ;
but if so, he must have set them side by side as they should
have been, rather than as they were. The canons of St. Ours,
the canons of the cathedral church of his native city, and such
other members of collegiate bodies as lay within the circle of
his limited knowledge, may not, it is true, have lived unchaste
lives ; may not have loved to doff the ecclesiastical habit
and wear the military in its place ; may not have loved,
as St. Peter Damian says was the wont of some, to live in
frequented thoroughfares, to chaffer with hucksters in the
market place, to examine with dainty curiosity the mystic pro-
ducts of the milliner's skill, and discuss with epicurean nicety
the gastronomic marvels of the cookshop ; ^ for there never

' Thus St. Odilo, ' inter ipsa primordia . . . clericali sorte est donatus ' at
Brioude ; and Guibert of Nogent was a canon of Beauvais when as yet a mere boy.
But let the following suffice : ' Scholares pueri et impuberes adolescentuli ob
sanguinis dignitatem promoventur ad ecclesiasticas dignitates et e sub ferula trans-
feruntur ad principandum presbyteris ; leetiores interim quod virgas evaserint quam
quod metuerint principatum.' — S. Bernardi, De Moribus et Officio Episcopi.

2 'Necdum attigerat setatis annum quintum decimum.' He had not attained
his fifteenth year, therefore he had not completed his fourteenth.

' ' Hoc autem tempore clericis quod de quibusdam loquor parum videtur si suo
Deo vivendo carnaliter subtrahant ; nisi etiam ab ecclesiasticae procurationis excu-
biis per angiportus et nundinarum stationes habitando secedant ; nimirum suavius
judicantes si cauponum tabernas olfaciant qu^m si divini sacrificii quotidie limen
terant, magisque delectat eos textricum gynrccea conspicere quam coelestis eloquii
paginis incubare. . . . Nunc autem e contra ii qui divinis sunt ca;remoniis man-
cipati ecclesice sacraria remota contemnunt, habitare vero inter forensis strepitus

A COMPARISON OF IDEALS. ^y

was an age in which the clerical caste was composed of none
but uxorious, idle, or gluttonous parsons; and the best as well
as the worst of us are prone to exaggerate both the number
and the heinousness of such grave scandals. Nevertheless,
when Anselm was a boy, the canons known to ordinary
experience could not for a moment be set in comparison with
the average members of the Benedictine order ; ^ and it may
well be questioned whether over the whole face of Christendom
there was as yet a single college of canons who lived as St.
Augustine would have wished that they should live, at the
moment upon which the child undertook the investigation which
now engages our notice. Thus, his comparison of the monastic
life and the canonical was a comparison of ideals. In a man
of matured intellect such comparison would not astonish us ;
but that -a boy of thirteen years should, by an inductive effort
of the reason, have succeeded in setting side by side two
ideals evolved from ecclesiastical literature, or from whatever
accessible source; that, having set them side by side, he
should have tested them, each in its turn, by all that he
knew of the Divine will; and that, convinced of the good-
ness of his decision, he should then have lost no time in en-
deavouring to give it practical effect, is wonderful indeed ;
and we scarcely know whether more to admire his moral or
his intellectual intrepidity.

Eadmer describes the event with suitable brevity, and if
we are inclined to blame him for not telling us at what
precise date the little philosopher began to institute an
inquiry which must have been characterised by not a little of

murmura concupiscunt.' — S. Pet. Dam. De Covnmini Vitd Clericortim. And
Warner, of St. Blaise, speaks thus : * Haec est vita clericorum qui litigant in
conviviis ac disceptationes habent in trufis. '

1 The first step in the direction of clerical reform was taken as late as the year
1039, when four canons of the Cathedral of Avignon, ' touched by the love of
God, ' formed themselves into a religious community under the shadow of a ruinous
and deserted church outside their city. But, even so, we must remember that there
is a wide difference between the holy defection of a few and the corporate reform
of all.

a8 AN ABSTRACT INQUIRY.

the originality, the subtilty, and the boldness that marked
the profounder efforts of his manhood, we must remember
that the reticence is not his own, but Anselm's.* Like those
profounder efforts, it was an exertion of the speculative
intellect, cold and scientific. There was nothing in it of
inspiration, as the word inspiration is generally used ; neither
was he urged to it by impulse, led by example, or directed
by persuasion. What, therefore, we are to contemplate is
a child, forgetful of the exterior accidents of princely birth,
and absorbed in the prosecution of an abstract inquiry, the
sole aim of which is the discovery of the mode of life most
pleasing to God. This is all ; but it is enough.

Would, then, that some magician would show us this tall,
white-robed boy, of refined features, delicate complexion, and
abundant light hair shorn at the crown with the clerical
tonsure ; show him to us, now perusing the sacred page of
Scripture, now unclasping a volume of St. Gregory or St.
Jerome, and transcribing here a text, and there some glowing
phrase of ancient wisdom ; show him to us day by day poring
over the unfolded treasures of a much loved literature, and
lost in a research too sacred for words ; show him to us alone
with his own heart, alone in the sight of God, alone in his
quest of the highest destiny attainable here below. And
would that Eadmer had been allowed to describe to us what
followed ; for this he could have done easily enough. He
could have told us something about the monastery which the
lad chose for his new home, and the name and aspect of its
abbot, and supplied us with means for realising the most
thrilling scene in that young life. He could have told us
how the boyish canon was ceremoniously ushered into the
guest-chamber; how he prostrated himself on the ground

' We must not make Eadmer's words mean more than they tell us. He
seems, however, of set purpose to have suppressed not only the boy's precise age
at the beginning of his inquiry, but his age when he presented himself to the abbot.
Anselm would certainly be siii cofnpos on the completion of his fourteenth year,
and I suspect that he awaited that event before going to the abbot.

AN EMBARRASSING REQUEST. 39

when the abbot entered ; and how the holy man, bidding him
rise, soon learnt with mingled astonishment and dismay that
this descendant of emperors, of kings, of dukes, and of mar-
quises, this great-nephew of the last of the grand old line of
the Counts of Aosta, possessed by one enthralling conviction,
was longing to throw aside the trappings of the secular state,
to resign all present and prospective pomp and dignity, and,
poor amongst the poor, assume the habit of a novice and
die to the world !

The postulant told his story with all the modest assurance
and quiet unreserve of one who took it for granted that to re-
ceive he only had to ask ; but was presently stupefied to learn
that he had miscalculated, or, rather, had quite forgotten to
take into account, the perplexities and the needs which beset
even religious communities here below. The abbot was only
too well aware that to entertain the request would be to invite
his own ruin, since Gundulf, who had a power and influence
in Aosta, which none of its inhabitants were likely to think of
questioning,' was not the man to allow his only child — the
child in whose fate were involved the historic interests of his
own family and Ermenberg's, the child who was to inherit his
own claims against the Marchioness Adelaide, and Bishop
Burchard's claim against the Count of Maurienne her husband,
would not allow such a child to be shut up in a cloister with-
out his consent ; and, sooner than give this, would transform
the cloister into a heap of stones.^ The abbot was peremptory,

1 The relation of the Counts of Maurienne to the valley of Aosta can scarcely
have given them a claim to meddle in the internal economy of the city. The
bishop and citizens were free of any such interference, and the bishop had sovereign
rights inside the walls, and probably over a limited area outside.

* A similar instance is to be found in the case of Herve, who subsequently
became archpriest or dean of Tours, who sought the monastic estate, but with like
ill success. 'Qui, ut generosioribus mos est, nobiliter educatus, dehinc ver6
scholis artium liberalium applicatus . . . Relictis autem pompaticse scientise
studiis, ad quoddam monasterium clam ingrediens, monachum se fieri satis devote
postulavit. Sed quoniam, ut diximus, clari erat generis idcirco parentum minas
pertimescentes nullo modo acquievere . . , fratres ejusdem monasterii.' — Rodulf,
Glabri Hist. iii. § 4.

40 A FORLORN CONSOLATION.

and the postulant in despair. Nothing could be done, and
there was nothing more to say on either side ; unless, indeed,
the good man, touched by the child's woe, gave him the
forlorn consolation, that He who was calling him to the
religious state would not suffer him to die in the secular.

A forlorn consolation indeed ; for Anselm knew that the
power, the authority, and the influence, which were sufficient
to paralyse the courage of the Benedictine, were the power,
the authority, and the influence of a man who knew how to
assert in his son's name the right of succeeding to the ances-
tral throne of the bishops of Aosta. And how, in such an
event, would it become that son to act ? Must he, to please
his father, violate conscience and consent to wear the mitre }
Or must he fly betimes the scene of so great a danger "i
And if, reviewing in this crisis the steps of the argument
which had directed him to the religious life, he consulted
once more the text of the Gospels, to learn, if learn he might,
what the Divine Author of Christianity would teach in this
emergency, he certainly found three or four passages in the
inspired volume which, since they are familiar to the reader,
need not be quoted, but which it would have required some
sophistry to explain away. Or, if he traced through his
tears such records of the Church's legislation as regulated the
practice of the age, he must have seen that he had not been
mistaken in believing, as all the world then believed, that
there was not a law in Christendom which forbad him to
relinquish his canonry and become a monk.^

All this was perfectly true and very interesting ; but the
logic of facts can be as inexorable as any other, and poor little
Anselm was at his wit's end.

No ; not quite. There was one resource left. He was
set, it is true, in the crisis of a supreme perplexity, and had

' Thus the fourth Council of Toledo enjoins as follows (Can. 49) : * Clericis
qui monachorum propositum appetunt, quia meliorem vitam sequi cupiunt, liberos
ab episcopo in monasterio largiri oportet ingressus. ' This is quoted by St. Anselm,
Ep, iii. 12, 13, who also adduces the authority of Gregory the Great.

A BOLD PRAYER. 41

no human counsellor to help him ; but he could at least turn
to One whom he loved to call the magni consilii Angelus, Him
whose will he desired to do. He turned and prayed that at
whatever cost that will might be accomplished in him. A
slight thing indeed was health, and a slight thing life itself,
when set in comparison with the execution of those counsels
of perfection to which he conceived that will to be calling
him ; and, as if to assure Heaven of the sincerity of his vow,
he prayed that an illness might be granted him,^ if so be an
illness might introduce him to a state of life, second only to
the angelic, a state of life as far superior to all other on this
earth as is that of the Cherubim to the rest of the heavenly
host.2

The story is best told by Eadmer : * Persisting in his
design, he prayed God for the grace of an illness, that so he
might be received into the monastic order for which he
yearned. A wonderful thing then happened. God, as if to
show him that even in other emergencies he might surely
trust to be heard by the Divine compassion, gave favourable
heed to the prayer, and visited the boy with an overmastering
weakness of body. Reduced to a grievous sickness, Anselm
now sent word to the abbot, assured him he apprehended
death, and prayed to be made a monk. But the abbot's fears
were obstinate, and the request was not granted. So does
human sight scan the ways of God ; but erringly. He whose
foreseeing eye can by nothing be deceived was unwilling that

* William of Malmesbury's account is slightly different : * Petierat et acceperat
adeo gravis morbi incommodum quo parens uterque perterritus Deo filium voveret.'
2 Bishop Yves, of Chartres, says {Decreta, vii. 22) : ' Sacerdotes igitur monachi
atque canonici . . . angeli vocantur. Sed unusquisque angelicus ordo quanto
claritatem Dei viciniiis contemplatur tanto dignitate sublimior affirmatur. Nam,
uti cherubim, monachi sex alis velantur.' And an oft-quoted poem on the mo-
nastic state concludes thus : —

' Qui semper Sancfus triplicata voce resultant,
In terris monachi qui modulantur idem.
Sic cherubim ccelo, monachi tellure manentes,
Unum dant uni servitium Domino. '

42 A FIXED RESOLVE.

His servant should have share in the religious life of that
place ; ^ because He had some others hidden in the bosom of
His mercy, whom, as became evident in due time. He was
preparing to be informed by Anselm to the doing of His will.

' ' Servum suum ipsius loci conversatione noluit [Deus] implicari.' I am con-
strained to draw attention to the unfaithful fidelity of Dean Church's rendering of
these words : * It was not God's will that he should be entangled in the conversa-
tion of that place.' Nothing could be more infelicitous; for conversatio has a
technical meaning all its own, and implicari should not be translated as if it were
irretiri or illaqueari.

I. The modern use of the English word conversation is entirely wide of
Eadmer's conversatio. The word with him means life as member of a religious
community, in opposition to the coimnunis vita, or life in the world (see Cur
Deus Homo, lib. ii. cap. iii. ). I could fill pages with instances. This use of the
word is a commonplace of mediaeval Latin.

II. The word hnplicari is of less frequent occurrence ; but I trust that I shall
make its meaning clear.

1. When St. William of Dijon was a child his nurse once left him at the door
of a church while she and some other servants entered a neighbouring house to
take some refreshment, ' in quihtis necesse erat illis qucedam victualia qucerere. '
Whilst they were thus employed, not entangled — dum in his diutius implicarenttir
— the child crawled into the church, when he was cured of a troublesome weakness.
— Vita S. Guill. Divon. lib. ii. cap. i.

2. St. Salaberg was sought in marriage by a certain Blandinus, but much
against her will, since she had made a vow to employ, not entangle, herself in the
Divine commandments — divinis prceceptis se implicare voverat. — Vit. S. Salabergce,
cap. vi.

3. Arnold, the author of the Miracula S. Emmerami, says of himself, * Sub-
duxi me libris paganis, et, saniore consilio, implicabar divinis^ (' I spent my time
in the study of sacred literature ').

4. The like is said of another : ' Cum isdem vir sacrce scriptura studiis atten-
tissim^ fuerit implicittis ' ( ' Engaged or employed in the study of holy scripture ').
— Angelran. Centulens. Vita, § 20.

5. ' Implicari exsequiis ' is ' to take part in a funeral,' as where we read of a
disciple of St. Angelran's that * desiderabat . . . optimi patris implicari exsequiis.^
—Ibid. § 21.

6. And in the Life of St. Hugh of Lincoln we find the phrase * honestis impli-
cari exercitiis.^

In short, the word is colourless as water and tasteless as white of egg. Not so
irretiri and illaqueari. Eadmer uses the former where he remarks, in his Life of
St. Oswald, ^quam difficile sit hominem inter mundi illecebras gradientefti ipsis
illecebris non irretiri; ' and an unpublished MS. to which I have already alluded,
gives us irretitus in atnore.

But enough : unless indeed I add that whilst if?iplicari is the precursor of
the French s'employer, and the corresponding Italian, we have in implicamentum
the precursor of the English employment : * Sceculaj-ihus implicamentis ex more
• humano detentus est et adstrictus.^ — Arnoldi de Miractdis S. Emmerami^ lib. ii.

Let this suffice.

ANGELIC HARMONIES. 43

After a while health returned to the lad, and what he was
unable to do then he determined by the grace of God to do
at some future time.'

He had knocked at the gate of an earthly paradise, and
knocked in vain ; at the gate of the heavenly cloister, but
only to be disappointed. His place, for a time at least, must
be the secular state ; and he must adorn as best he might
his rank of secular canon.

It was not long after his recovery that the wintry silence
of the Valley of Aosta was broken by the approach from the
side of the Great St. Bernard of a numerous cavalcade, one
amongst whom, the humblest of men, with a face furrowed by
tears, and lips that moved evermore in silent prayer, was
evidently treated with no ordinary respect by his fellow
travellers. That respect was the only intimation of his rank,
for, contrary to the usage which forbad prelates to travel
without some show of pontifical state, he was enveloped in an
ordinary cloak and hood. It was Bruno, Bishop of Toul,
who had recently been appointed Pope by an abuse of the
imperial power, and who is known in history as St. Leo IX.^
His stay in Aosta was a brief one, for he was worn with
anxiety, and could have no peace till he should know that,
the clergy and people of the Eternal City concurring in his
election, Rome, and with it Christendom, were to be spared
the scandal of a disputed succession to the Papacy. The
stay was brief, but it was signalised by one of those presages
which the time so religiously noted ; for there it was, and
then, that Bruno heard angelic choirs weaving sweetest har-
mony to the words, * Thus saith the Lord, I think thoughts of
peace and not of affliction, and you shall call upon me and I
will hear you, and I will bring back your captivity from all

' I scarcely need remind the reader that, if my genealogical speculations be
correct, St. Leo IX. and St. Anselm were affines, Ermenberg being sister of the
Pope's sister-in-law ; in which case Leo would not improbably be the guest of
Gundulf and Ermenberg during his stay at Aosta.

44 ST. AN S ELM'S YOUTH STUDIOUS.

places ' (Dicit Dominus, Ego cogito cogitationes pacis et non
afflictionis : invocabitis me et ego exaudiam vos, et reducam
captivitatem vestram de cunctis locis '). A pretty legend : it re-
minds us of the 'Regina coeli Isetare' which the angels sang in
the hearing of St. Gregory, and of the mystical pomp of that
chapel at Einsiedeln which the King of Glory consecrated, saints
and angels ministering to Him. Bruno resumed his journey, and
the city relapsed into its usual stillness. No more angelic songs
have been set on record ; and yet, if Anselm strained his ear
to catch a promise of the peace which he had failed to secure,
and of redemption from his present state and the gilded
terrors of the episcopate, who shall say that he listened in
vain } ^ Little did he think that he was himself to play a
part in the great drama to which that angelic melody formed
so exquisite an overture ; but when the lapse of years at last
brought him into the thick of the action, he must often have
remembered that close to the Pope-elect as he drew nigh to
the city there rode an unassuming monk from Cluny, and that
the name of that monk was Hildebrand.^

This took place in the January of 1049.

Anselm had now entered upon a studious, innocent, and
exemplary youth, which was to be spent partly under the
direction of his uncles, and partly in the ancestral palace of
his mother's family.

His youth was studious ; for only then can he have formed
those habits of profound and carefully sustained argument
and of accurate and lucid diction which characterised his
manhood ; then it was that, in the perusal of all the literature
sacred and profane within his reach, he acquired that skill in
critical analysis which none better than he knew was scarcely
to be attained but by the scientific study of the laws of

* Otto Frisingensis, Chronic, lib. vi. cap. xxxiii. Acta SS. Apr. 19.

2 If I wished to dramatise the saint's life I should feel no scruple in making
the palace of the Anselms the scene of this celestial overture, and there should be
three persons on the stage : the Pope elect, Leo IX., Prior Hildebrand, and the
youthful Canon Anselm, the hero of my play.

ST. ANSELM'S YOUTH INNOCENT. 45

language, where language was to be found in its choicest
form ; then it was that he stored his mind with the maxims of
ancient wisdom which adorn so many of his letters, and with
the poetical allusions which lend a grace to so many of his
philosophical treatises. Nor can we doubt that his thirst for
knowledge was alternately stimulated and allayed by the
perusal and transcription of works borrowed from the libraries
of neighbouring monasteries, from Ivrea, from Fruttuaria,
from Chiusa, and from St. Maurice-en- Valais, which had pro-
perty in and near the city, and whose annals recorded the
name of his great-uncle. Archbishop Burchard, of Lyons, in
its list of abbots, and that of his uncle. Bishop Burchard, of
Aosta, in its list of provosts.

His youth was innocent ; for Eadmer, when discoursing
of his Meditations, tells us that those compositions, designed
mainly for the use of others and written, not in his own person
but in that of the penitents or disciples for whose benefit
they were composed, were acts of reparation for the sins of
other men and for his own, * if indeed he had any,' a reserva-
tion of no slight value in our estimate of his character when
a young man ; and William of Malmesbury gives testimony
still more valuable when he assures us that after Anselm had
emerged from boyhood not once was the purity of his soul
ruffled by an unguarded look : ' Pueritiam egressus nunquam
vel lasciviori aspectu castimoniam turbavit.'

And it was exemplary ; for during these early days he
practised one of the distinctive virtues of the ideal canonicate
in distributing his personal estate and the income of his
canonry amongst the poorer members of his order, and formed
those habits of life which, on his arrival at Le Bee, led the
inmates of that monastery to regard him as a model of the
clerical character.^

There is a passage in Eadmer's Life of St. Oswald of York

1 ' In omni clericali officio apprime eruditus.' Eadmer ( Vit. § ^-^ dwells at
some length on this characteristic in Anselm when he was yet a secular.

46 ST. ANSELM'S YOUTH EXEMPLARY.

which agrees so nicely with what we know of Anselm's
character at this period of his career, as to read like a dis-
carded page from the first draft of his * Anselmiana' : ^ — * He
was a canon amongst canons ; and, if the reader ask what
sort amongst what sort of canons, a canon regular amongst
irregulars. With indefatigable industry he carried out all
that the ideal of the canonical life teaches and enjoins ; whilst
they, disdaining it, walked according to the desires of their
own heart. Hence, by reason of the plenitude of the Divine
grace, which shed all its lustre on his character, he was
deemed worthy of the admiration of them all. . . . But
they, choosing rather to hold on by the lax habits of a long
degenerate life — although, seeing that he was so good and his
way of living so good, they paid him the homage of a cour-
teous respect and a good will not to be denied — plainly
told him that on no account would they become his disciples
in an affair like this. He, however, cared nothing for their
empty praises, but grieved without ceasing day and night,
and prayed God to give him counsel for his salvation.'

Nothing can be more probable than that young Anselm
should even thus have striven to rouse his fellow canons, and
especially his uncles, from a secular lethargy to that severer
mode of life which their successors three generations later
were to emulate. We have two letters of his addressed to
his godfathers and nutritores many years later, and at a time
when they must already have been far advanced in life.
These letters prolong the strain of his youthful expostula-

' And the more so as what goes immediately before reads like the first draft
of what we actually have in the Vita. We know that some passages of the
Ansehniana were cancelled, and we know that Eadmer was loth to see perish
what he had composed with great pains, I think it likely that much of what he
tells us of St. Oswald's early days was the transcript mutatis mictandis of what he
had written about Anselm's ; this is to say, the whole of the passage, from the
words, 'Unde et ab omnibus diligebatur, ' to 'singulis horis meditatur.' And
further, it is not impossible, and I think it more than probable, that the passages
* Quid amplius ? Fit canonicus . . . gradiebatur,' and 'Sed illi . . . precebatur
nocte ac die,' are salvage from the Ansehniana, inserted without any alteration.

LAMBERT AND FOLCERAD. 47

tions, and to their plaintive music Lambert and Folcerad
pass from our view.

The first is as follows : —

* To the most noble lords, his much loved guardians, and
dearest uncles ; May they so pass through temporal goods
despising them, as to endure in eternal goods enjoying them.

* Oh that when my uncles read this letter they may feel
the emotion to which my eyes give witness as I indite it ;
for my heart is readier to prompt the tear than my pen to
print the syllables. If no lapse of time and no stretch of
space can take from my bodily frame the lineaments it
received from your race, and the stature it attained under
your fostering care, neither can any employm.ent of my
soul lessen the love I bear you, a love engendered in my
very being and sustained by your goodness. And as un-
remittingly as my heart burns with love for you, so ardently
does it ever thirst for your true happiness. . . .' ^

The second, which has a similar superscription, is to
this effect : —

* Certain I am that you have the same love for me as I
for you, and that your love is as firmly rooted in your
heart as my love is in mine ; and not less sure am I that
you always long to have news of me as ardently as I to hear
news of you. But you will be much better able to learn the
one and to send the other with all the fulness we desire
through the medium of the bearer of this sheet than by
letters, which are necessarily scanty. Still, there is one
longing in my heart, and what that longing is may He
from whom it comes, to whom it goes, and who alone knows
of it, communicate to you with all the intimacy and all the
persuasiveness which He knows to be for your good. And
yet fain would I let you know something of the fulness of

» Ep. i. 18,

48 A PERILOUS BRIDGE.

my heart. It is this. I greatly fear lest you go on loving
the world, and living in the world, sleeping even to the
end ; and so find nothing, or all too little, in your hands,
when with the men of riches you awake after the end.' ^

They were near the end when these words were written.
Let them go.

There is a spot in the Valdostan territory which has sup-
plied St. Anselm with a parable of the dangers of the present
life, and of the spirit in which those dangers should be en-
countered. The spirit he recommends was precisely that
which governed and consecrated his youth, and, since he, no
doubt, had paid many a visit to the spot during the period
embraced by the present chapter, it may not be improper
here to add some slight notice of it.

It is in one of his Meditations that he illustrates the uncer-
tainties and perils of our state by the figure of a bridge not
more than a foot in width, thrown across some deep and
gloomy chasm ; a bridge along which the traveller walks, not
knowing whither a step may carry him. No such structure
was ever yet erected as a means of human transit, and yet
he writes as if he had seen some such. He had ; and no one
who loves his memory should visit Aosta without paying a
visit to Le Pont d'Ael.

Le Pont d'Ael, or Le Pondel, two years older than our
era, is all that now remains of a Roman aqueduct which,
purposely dismantled of its upper arcade, has thus been con-
verted into a means of communication between either bank
of the Cogne, at a point where the bed of that angry torrent
narrows into a gorge hemmed in by two precipitous flanks
of rock. Into the live limestone of these Roman skill has
inserted a masonry all its own, a masonry that rises in
adamantine walls to a height of some forty yards on this
side and on that, and then knits itself into a bold but narrow

' Ef. i. 45.

THE BRIDGE DESCRIBED. 49

semicircular arch athwart the chasm, rising thence in squared
masonry to a level some ten feet above the key-stone, when
it stops short, now no longer an aqueduct, but a foot bridge.

The traveller approaches Le Pondel by descending the
grassy sward that slopes to the eastern edge of the chasm, a
sward thickly planted with chestnut trees, in pleasing contrast
to the steep and barren fall of the opposite cliff, a fall so steep
that no shadow lies on it at noonday, and so barren, that
nothing grows on it but a few thin blades of rye, cultured
with infinite pains by a thrifty peasantry. On reaching the
bridge, he finds that it is a long and narrow causeway, five
feet in utmost width, and protected on either side, if protected
be the word, by the slightest of parapets, half a yard in height,
the work of the fathers of the valley. And if, adventuring
on the bridge, he stops half way across to look up the gorge,
he experiences a sensation of terror not easily to be surpassed.
Down headlong precipitous stairs of rock, now sweeping in
smooth cataracts, now dashing against boulders of limestone,
the trophies and the witnesses of its fury ; now breaking into
stormy spray ; and evermore bellowing forth the wrath of a
thousand thunders, the torrent flies down into the chasm ;
and the fascinated spectator quakes as he overlooks his rickety
parapet, and tries to measure the abyss. But time was when
the passenger had not the solace of so wide a causeway, or
even of so slight a parapet ; time was when, the superincum-
bent range of arches still intact, the structure gradually nar-
rowed at its successive stages, till the slabs which covered
the trough of the aqueduct were scarcely more than a yard
in breadth ; and when a reach of pavement much narrower
than the present, and by reason of its enhanced elevation not
only much narrower, but very much longer, must have tried
the courage of even the most courageous. By St. Anselm's
day, however, the covering slabs had, no doubt, been re-
moved, and, whilst the interior of the trough remained as a
strait but secure path for the timorous, those who courted

VOL. I. E

5o THE PAR4BLE OP' THE BRIDGE.

danger might walk along the coping that crowned either of
its sides.^ Such coping would present precisely the kind of
bridge described by St. Anselm, a long, narrow, and extended
way, not more than one foot in width, across a deep and
gloomy abyss ; and, if he ever ventured to take a few steps
along it, he must have experienced sensations terrific enough
to suggest the picture which he has left in his first meditation,
a picture as dantesque as anything outside the pages of
Dante.

* Think that you see some deep and gloomy ravine, with
every kind of torment down in its bed. Imagine over it a
bridge, stretched across the yawning space, and measuring
only one foot in width. If anyone were compelled to go
along a bridge so strait, so high, so dangerous, and to go
along it with eyes bandaged so as not to see his steps, and
with hands tied behind him so as not to feel his way with a
staff, what fear, what anguish would possess him ! . . . Nay,
more, imagine monstrous birds of prey sweeping round
about the bridge, intent on betraying him down into the gulf ;
will not his terrors be enhanced } And what if, one by one,
the paving tiles slip from his heels as he advances } Surely
he will be stricken with greater and greater anxiety the
further he goes.'

Le Pont d'Ael, the dizzy bridge over the Cogne, must
have suggested this terrible picture. Here is its lesson : —

* That perilous bridge, from which the awkward traveller
is launched, is the present life ; for he who lives ill drops
down to hell. The paving tiles that slip away behind the
wayfarer are the days of this our state, which so pass away
as never to return, but, by the shortening of their tale, ever
urge us to the end and compel us to hasten to our goal. The
birds that sweep round about the bridge and baulk the pas-

* This is no fanciful account. It is based on careful examination and study
made, for that purpose, of the Pont du Gard. Of course the Pont du Gard is
immensely larger than the Pont d'Ael.

'IVE ARE THE TRAVELLERS: 51

senger are malignant spirits, whose whole study it is to cast
us down from the direct path we tread, and plunge us head-
long into the deep abyss. We, we are the travellers. . . .
Will you not, then, set as you are in such danger, cry to your
Creator, that, defended by His protection, you may sing with
confidence, though troops of foes beset you, " The Lord is my
light and my salvation, whom shall I fear } " '

Yes, indeed ; though the inhabitants of the city and valley
of Aosta inherit no tradition of Anselm and his family, the
eternal heights of the Becca di Nona are the ladder by which
in infancy he clomb to heaven ; and the masonry of the Pont
d'Ael shall for many and many a generation remain as his
own parable of the holy fear which set its consecrating mark
upon his studious, his innocent, and his exemplary youth.

£2

5^

CHAPTER IV.

ST. anselm's early manhood.

Of all the metaphors employed in the eleventh century to
illustrate the excellence of the monastic state, none is more
usual than that in which its repose and security are likened
to those of a haven, whence the rescued mariner beholds
unhurt the fury of the elements from which he has been
delivered by the unmerited favour of an ever-watchful Provi-
dence. No metaphor could have been happier than this, as
none could be in more intimate accordance with the monastic
spirit ; for are not the dread forces of wind and wave as truly
the creation of an Almighty Hand as the rock to which the
breathless mariner clings, vowing never again to adventure
the perils of ocean ? Nor did it lack the guarantee of
antiquity, for it was as old as the age of Gregory the Great,
whose comparison of the secular life and the religious must
have engaged young Anselm's attention during the inquiry
recorded in the last chapter.

' One day,' writes St. Gregory, * tired with the turmoil of
secular cares, I sought a quiet spot, friendly to grief. ....
As I sat there, weary and silent, my dear son, Peter the
Deacon, came to me ; ... . who, finding me consumed by
my heart's malady, said, " Has any new thing happened, that
a sadness greater than ordinary possesses you ? " I replied,
" The grief, Peter, which I day by day endure is by its con-
suetude old enough, but by its increment ever new. My soul
suffers from all this distraction, and smarts from her wound.
She remembers what she was in the cloister ; she remembers

THE STORMY SEA. 53

how all worthless things then lay far below, and how she
stood superior to the fleeting pursuits of life. In those days
she thought of nothing and cared for nothing but heavenly
things. Mistress of the body, she rose superior in her con-
templations to all the bonds of the flesh, and thus even courted
death and yearned for it as the beginning of life and the re-
quital of all her toil. But now she is, under pretext of pas-
toral responsibility, exposed to the distractions which beset
men in the secular state, and has dropped from the ripe
beauty of the eternal world to gather stains from the dust
of earthly employment. . . . Too well do I know my loss ;
and in exact proportion to my distress for what has passed
away is the weight of the burden that I carry. Behold me
buffeted by the waves of a vast sea ; the ship of my soul is
beaten by the billows and the storm. As I reflect upon my
past life, like one who casts a backward glance at the harbour
he has left, I groan for very sorrow. And, what gives keenest
poignancy to my grief as I drift out to sea, the plaything
of the mountainous waves, is this : that I almost fail to
descry the haven I have left. Such are my trials. And
truly, truly, may I say that the very existence of those who
forsake this present world and climb to the height of the
angelical life is a perpetual aggravation of my woe ; for when
memory puts me in mind of the elevation of their state, I know
and feel and own how low, how very low, I have fallen ! " ' ^

So deplorable a lot did Gregory the Great esteem it to
have exchanged his cell upon the Cselian Hill for a throne in
the Lateran. Living in the former, his soul enjoyed the
security, the serenity and the repose of a harbour unvisited
by storms and pacified with unbroken visions of perennial
bliss ; seated on the latter, he was involved in cares which,
however inevitable and however sacred, were so many secular
employments that harassed his soul with distractions as pitiless

^ S, Greg, Magn. Dialogi, sub initio.

54 THE TRANQUIL SHORE,

as the persecutions of a tempestuous sea. In another place
he says : * Men look upon me as the chief administrator of
the Church ; more true were it to say that I am tossed about
on the billows of the world, and am too often only not over-
whelmed by them. Do you who pass a tranquil life in the
serenity of your retired home, do you who stand upon the
unthreatened shore, stretch forth your hands in prayer for
me, as I sail upon the waves, or rather, as I sink beneath
them ; help me, I implore you, with what addresses to heaven
you can, whilst I am struggling to reach the land of the
living. So shall you have an eternal reward not only for the
life you are leading, but for your salvation of me.' ^

Nor was it only by themselves that good and saintly men
whose lives lay outside the precincts of the monastery were
described as storm-tossed mariners toiling against the angry
elements. The metaphor was used of them by others. Thus
Waso, Bishop of Liege, is pourtrayed as one who, beset by
the tempests of the treacherous world and engaged in
governing secular persons, was set entirely upon the thought
of heaven, and mortified to all exterior things.^ And we are
told of Boso, a disciple of St. Anselm's at Le Bee, that he
had been so carefully brought up by his parents as, although
set in the very midst of the waves of the world, to have con-
tracted no worldly stains.^

* S, Greg. Magn. Ep. xi. i.

^ * Licet inter fluctuantis sseculi procellas .... divina tamen contempla-
tione suspendi solebat.' — Vasonis Leod. Ep. Vita {Patrol, cxlii. 761).

' * Boso sic bonis artibus pietateque est imbutus ut in mediis fluctibus mundi
nihil prorsus immundum contraxerit.' — Guil. Gemmet. Hist. Ducum Northman.
cap. xxi.

' Cum diu (Guilbertus Boso et Raynaldus) inter suos honestam vitam duxissent
amore Dei succensi, quasi post marina pericula, portum sub sancto Anselmo abbate
Beccum petierunt.' — Vita Ven. Bosonis {Patrol, cl. 724).

Here are other instances : —

1. * Sicut olim columba Noe cum foris non invenisset ubi requiesceret, ad
arcam et ad ipsum JSJoe redibat ; sic iste vir inter hujus saeculi fluctus ad secretum
cordis recurrens in Christi delectatione quiescebat. ' — S. Odonis de Vita S. Geraldi
Comit. Atirillac. § 16.

2. Of Odo himself we are told that * Naturse violentia cogebatur, ut parentibus

THE SHIP AT HER MOORINGS. 55

But this recalls us to St. Anselm, who, so far from con-
tracting a stain from living in the world, remained in it
consoled with an inward peace which could scarcely have
been profounder had he been dwelling among saints in a
cloister, remained in it, in such wise dead to it, that Eadmer,
not venturing to speak of him under the figure of a ship at
sea, describes him by the pretty and exceptional metaphor of
a ship in port, of a ship fixed to her moorings, of a ship safe
from the rage of the billows. And well he might, for Anselm
has left it on record of himself, that although he could not
enter religion for many years after he had formed the sacred
resolution of his boyhood, yet to do so was ever the sole
desire of his heart, and the one end which he held steadily in
view : * Vobis consulo quod me mihi cum sic essem sicut vos
nunc estis singulariter consuluisse . . . cognoscitis.' *

And if it here be asked, why then did he not break with
home and preferment, fly beyond the reach of his father's
territorial and political influence, and bury himself in some
distant monastery, it may be enough to reply, not that such
an idea would have suggested to him a very grave theological
question, which he could scarcely answer to the satisfaction of
his conscience except by remaining where he was ; not that
his was too reposeful, too hopeful, too wise, too simple a
nature to resort to any unnecessary casuistry ; but, simply,
that his health was not yet robust enough to endure the usual
discipline of the cloister. Of this there cannot be a doubt ; let
it therefore be enough for us. The strange illness which had
befallen him in his boyhood left him for a long time in a state
of health the very opposite of robust ; and if after an interval
of convalescence he appears to have been strong enough to

quos periculis mundi hujus reliquerat innatantes debitum suae visitationis
offerret. '

3. "William of Dijon 'coepit .... cogitare qualiter suum genitorem ^ fluctivaga
istius sseculi cura subtraheret '

In short, the metaphor was a commonplace,

» Ep. i. 36,

56 A CRUEL CALUMNY.

endure slight, but scarcely more than slight, fatigue, it was
not till his twenty-seventh year that he had so far outgrown
his weakness as to be able to enter some cloister where the
rule of the Benedictine order was observed with a considerably
moderated rigour. So that for a long course of years he must
have been content to remain as he was ; to follow the Divine
Office as a secular ecclesiastic with as punctilious an exactness
as he could bring to the task ; to read his Virgil, his Horace, his
Persius, his Plato, perhaps, and his Aristotle, with such assist-
ances as he could command ; and, above all, to guard the
sanctuary of his heart. As to this last particular he would
seem to have left us no other record than the passage just
quoted ; but it is a passage of inestimable value when read in
conjunction with the evidence already adduced from William
of Malmesbury : * Pueritiam egressus nunquam vel lasciviori
aspectu castimoniam turbavit.' ^

Thus pure, studious, recollected, and hopeful, he passed
the days of his youth ; when, as he entered on manhood, a
change, if change it may be called, came over him, which
challenges our careful attention ; for some fluent foreign
writers have made of it a text for period after period of useless
rhetoric, and for one of the most astounding calumnies to be
found in the annals of all history. They have not, indeed,
converted a molehill into a mountain, they have done worse :
by the strangest of alchemy they have converted a diamond
into a dunghill, and transformed a blameless adolescence into
that which the pen refuses to describe. Nothing could be
more cruel, as nothing could be more false, and there is not
the shadow of a suggestion from end to end of Eadmer's
account to lend excuse to it. This is what Eadmer says :
' As bodily health, early manhood, and a successful secular
career welcomed him with their smiles, the fervour of his
heart, which had been set upon embracing the monastic
estate, began by slow degrees to cool ; so much so that he

» De Gest. Pontif, Angl, lib. i.

h

THE TRUTH, 57

rather wished to pursue his course along the paths of the
secular life than leave them and become a monk.' Then
comes a passage, intelligible enough as written by such a man
as Eadmer : ' He also began insensibly to neglect those
literary pursuits, of which he was by habit a very enthusiastic
student, and to turn his attention to manly sports.' This is
all : ' He began.' Pray, is it so very wicked in a young man
of twenty, though he be a subdeacon, or even a deacon, to
study the bias of a bowl, or the curve described by a javelin }
But let Eadmer tell his story : ' After all, however, his love
and his devotion for his mother held him back somewhat
from these pastimes. But on her death, like a ship that
has lost its anchor, he narrowly escaped drifting utterly off
into the billows of the world' — the billows, that is to say,
among which the lot of a saintly pope like Gregory the
Great, a pious bishop with heart set on heaven like Waso
of Li^ge, a blameless youth like Boso, and numberless other
holy souls had been cast, throughout every age from the
foundation of Christianity.

The case is clear and simple enough : Anselm was not yet
a monk ; but he had resolved to become one. To him, as to
his future friend Hugh of Cluny, the cloister had hitherto
been a home for which his young heart yearned,^ and the
paradise from whose enclosure he trusted some day to look
back upon his life in the world as a period of banishment and
exile.^ And hence, when in old age he reviewed his mortal
career, it was not without regret that he pointed to one period
of it in which the intensity of his desire for the religious pro-
fession was allowed to relax ; to one short interval in which,

* 'Suspiranti ad patriam.' — S. Hugonis Vita, auctore Hildeberto, cap. i.

2 ' Didicit quanta sit differentia inter delicias paradisi claustralis et exilium vitae
SKCularis.' — S, Anselmi Epp. iii. 38.

* Claustralem paradisum et religiosam conversationem . . . deseruistis sed non
clausit Deus ostium paradisi . . . sed potiiis vos misericorditer coegit ut ad
requiem relictam rediretis.' — Ibid. iii. 102.

' Vere claustrum, fratres mei, vere religio est paradisus, ' — S. Bernardi Sermo de
Verbis Domini,

S8 THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER,

mortification not being his sole joy, he suffered his heart's
barque — to use his own phrase — to ride indolently at anchor
and run risk of drifting out to the open sea. But, be it a
thousand times repeated, he was never out of harbour, and he
has nowhere accused himself of what never happened. Perhaps
he could scarcely in his old age declare, like Hugh of Lincoln,
* Revera, ludere nunquam scivi,' or, like Hugh of Cluny, that
though he might have brandished a javelin in his youth, or
crossed the saddle otherwise than of necessity, he had done
so from sheer compulsion.^ But possibly enough he could
even say as much ; and his utmost extravagance of conduct
may have been that he once provided himself a pair of
hawking gauntlets ; but even so it is more than likely that
ere he could go forth and whistle the falcon to his wrist his
mother, whose prayers had long attended him in the austere
and religious seclusion of his study, saw them and persuaded
him not to put them on.

For, indeed, if it be unreasonable to apply to such terms
diSjiuctus sceculi a meaning utterly wide of the sense assigned
to them by those who had used them for five centuries from
the days of Gregory the Great, it is inexcusable to forget that
St. Anselm was a monachus monachorum, and fervent enough
in his love of monasticism to deem it a disadvantage to
have lived a year, a month, or a day, in the world after having
once formed the resolution of leaving it, and a diminution of
merit to have responded even for one thoughtless hour to the
smiles of health, such as his was, of youth, and of secular for-
tune ; for the entertainment of those sinless solicitations,
during however brief an interval, had snapped the continuity
of th.^X,juge martyriuMy that perpetual immolation, which has
been the holy vaunt of some partakers of our common nature.

But, even so, I have not yet exhibited his estimate of the
loss he had sustained in spending his boyhood, innocent and
angelic as that boyhood was, in the world rather than in a

* S. Hugonis Chmiac. Abbatis Vita^ cap. i.

A PATHETIC CONTRAST. 59

cloister. At the age of fifty he wrote as follows to his
friend Gilbert Crispin, the newly-appointed Abbot of West-
minster : —

* Better hopes must be entertained for you and the like
of you, whose life was nurtured in the cloister, than of me
and the like of me, whose life was for a time wasted in the
secular state. For you the hope must be, that by your
promotion to the cure of the souls of others your own con-
formity to right will be brought to its ideal perfection as
you instruct others to conform themselves to your likeness ;
for us the fear must be lest, oppressed by so great a burden
as the cure of souls, our own inconformity be aggravated
in the balance of God's hidden justice.' ^

What a strangely pathetic contrast ! Here are two abbots
charged with the cure of souls; but, whilst much may be
hoped for the one, much is to be feared for the other ; not
that the one had been always a saint and the other erewhile
a sinner, but solely because the one had entered the cloister
in infancy, the other in manhood. And the fervour with
which Anselm wrote thus to his friend at Westminster may
help us to understand, little as we appreciate them, the tears
he dropped upon Eadmer's account of the brief interval that
now engages our attention. For what, pray, is the purport
of that account.^ Not that for one brief day or hour he
definitively relinquished the idea of becoming a monk, but
that his boyish fervour began insensibly to cool ; not that he
deliberately consented to a temptation to live henceforth in
the world, but that he entertained the thought that a life in
the world might be the preferable state; not that he dis-
carded his studies and threw his energies into sports innocent
in themselves, but that he was on the point — only on the
point — of doing so. Do we ask, then, what can be the secret
of all this emotion.? There is only one thing that can
' E^. ii. 16.

6o ILLUSTRATIVE TERMS.

explain it, and that is his estinrmte of the blessedness of
the religious state. Whether or no we one by one and all
of us sympathise with him, matters not ; our only present
business is to understand him. He held it a supremely
blessed thing that a soul created for God should in the
earliest morning of life be transplanted to lawns of para-
disaical security, there to put forth its blossom and its fruit,
unhurt by chilling winds and nipping frost, and he deemed
it a grievous loss to have been surrounded, for however short
a time after reaching the age of reason, by any other acces-
sories than the alternate prayer, and chant, and silence, and
discipline, and labour, and penance of the cloister.

Now, fortunately enough, we can illustrate not only the
general purport, but the very words of Eadmer's strangely mis-
interpreted account of young Anselm's temporary vacillation
by two letters written by Anselm himself in his later life. In
the year 1093 the cantor of Paris cathedral — it was not as yet
a metropolitan church — sought and received the religious habit
in the monastery of St. Martin des Pr^s, but his diocesan
recovered him by force. To that diocesan Anselm, now
just about to be consecrated Primate of Britain, wrote as
follows : —

* You know what St. Gregory says in the case of a man
who, urged by Divine inspiration, had obtained the grace
of conversion to the religious life ; how he warns the man's
bishop by no means to thwart his design {propositum ^),
but rather to foster the flame with utmost endeavour, lest
the fervour kindled in the man should relax {ne fervor con-
ceptus in eo tepescaty ; and tells him that one who has
once sought the haven of the cloister {monasterii portum)
ought never again to be involved in the turmoil of eccle-
siastical cares. . . . God forbid, my lord, that on a bishop

' So Eadmer says of Anselm, 'coepit paulatim^;wr animi ejus ^ religiose
proposito tepestere.*

r

PARALLEL INSTANCES. 6l

should fall that sentence of His mouth, " He that gathereth
not with Me scattereth," and " He that is not with Me is
against Me." It is a fearful thing to hear that those whom
Christ has chosen from out of the world a bishop should
chain back to the world; that those whom Christ brings
home to port from the storms and tempests of the world
a bishop should drag out of harbour to be wrecked in the
whirlpool of the world ; that those whom Christ has shel-
tered in the fold from a host of scheming wolves a bishop
should filch from the fold and expose to the wolves.' ^

But the letter to the cantor himself is still more interesting,
for it gives us some idea of what may possibly enough have
passed in Anselm's heart during the critical epoch of his youth
with which we are at present concerned.

' I fear the crafty fiend is trying to deceive your soul,
and your soul is very dear to me ; I fear he is putting it to
you that, since you are forced against your will from the
execution of your holy design {a sancto proposito), you are
free to go on living in the clerical state {in clericatu) lawfully
and without blame as heretofore. Be sure, my dearest
friend, that you cannot possibly do this and be free from
blame (' nuUo modo hoc potest anima tua sine reprobatione
suscipere ') ; for Christ says, " No man putting his hand
to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of
heaven." And your mind is looking back from the plough
of Christ, if, growing lukewarm, it by any means fail of the
design to which Christ has called you, and on which you
have entered (* si a proposito ad quod te vocavit Christus, et
quod incepisti aliqua occasione tepescendo deficit '). . . If by
reason of bodily persecution we are to fly from city to city,
how much more by reason of spiritual? . . . You could
not have attempted anything more conducive to your

» EJ>, iii. 12.

62 A THANKFUL RETROSPECT.

salvation : nothing would be more dangerous than to
relinquish the attempt.' ^

Young Anselm's case, therefore, was, briefly, this : For-
bidden to enter a monastery prior to the completion of his
fourteenth year, and prevented from doing so subsequently
by obstacles he was unable to surmount, the fervour of his
desires began after some considerable interval to cool ; he
began to think that, not being a monk, it might be well not
to live so much like one in his father's house as he had
hitherto done ; and further, he began to familiarise his mind
with the thought of passing his life as a secular clergyman
rather than as a Benedictine monk. But these beginnings,
after all, were checked and never carried out in practice ; nor
do they bear the faintest trace of a moment's conscious sin.

This is all. For a little space the fervour of his long-
cherished hopes abated ; and, looking back in his life's evening
on that critical time, it seemed to him — such were his views
of the blessedness offered, and the responsibility incurred by
the religious vocation — as though while safe in port he had
for one instant of strange vacillation had half a mind to put
out to the treacherous and tempestuous ocean ; as though,
after so long carrying the cross with joy, he had only not set
it down, in that case, it might have been, never to be enabled
to take it up again ; as though, after having put his hand to
the plough, he had almost turned to take one perilous
sidelong glance at the forbidden world, and thus imperil his
fitness for a higher destiny.

And as he read Eadmer's record of that crisis — unless
indeed, the words be his own — tears fell upon the parchment ;
tears of regret, but of speechless gratitude ; tears that compel
the homage of our own bewildered and awe-stricken respect

' Ep. iii. 13. This case resembles St. Anselm's. The gate of the cloister
had been barred to him ; he thought, therefore, that he might remain a secular
clergyman without blame, or rather he began to think so. * Coepit paulatim^;^'^^
tepescere. *

DEATH OF ERMENBERG, 63

and of our indignant sorrow for the gross injury done in these
latter times to a spotless memory.

But another memory here claims our notice, that of
Ermenberg. The information which we possess about her is
so scanty that we must be content to guess where we would
only too gladly know ; but the following account has at least
the recommendation of probability. I think it likely that,
whether because Anselm was her first child, or because
when in labour she had resolved to devote him to the special
service of Heaven, or for whatever other reason, her highest
ambition had from the first been to consign him to a cloister ;
that, thwarted in this desire, she noted with joy the first
tokens of her child's religious vocation, and never failed to
buoy up his hopes against Gundulf 's contrary resolution ;
that being blessed, as years rolled along, with no other issue,
or rather, that being year after year unblessed by. children
that survived their birth, she beheld in these successive
afflictions the corrective hand of Him who claimed the entire
surrender of her first-born son ; that she hung all her ma-
ternal hopes upon an event so consonant with her views of
right as his entrance into religion ; that as time drifted on,
and those hopes were still unfulfilled, she exerted her best
endeavours to conciliate Heaven by keeping him true to
his resolution ; that at last she was consoled by the happy
birth of a daughter, but that the life of the child was only
secured at the sacrifice of her own.^ She passed away on
the second day of November in the year 1056.^^

It was now of little avail for Gundulf to reflect that, had
he been generous to Heaven three-and-twenty years ago, his

• This only sister, or only surviving sister, of Anselm's vi^as still the mother of
infant children at the close of the century {Epp. iii. 43 ; iv. 34, 52, 114). She
must, therefore, have been his junior by many years. I shall have to revert to
Richera on another occasion.

2 I owe the day of the month to one of the Colbert transcripts i^Lat. 13905) in
the National Library at Paris. The year is, I regret to say it, conjectural. It
cannot have been 1057 ; it may have been 1055, but 1056 is much more likely.

64 GUNDULF'S REFLECTIONS,

generosity might have been rewarded by the blessing of other
sons, who would even now have been growing up into man-
hood ; and after so many disappointed hopes for living
offspring it was a bitter mortification to see his wife sink
into the grave bequeathing to him not a son, but a daughter.
Anselm, among the other things which he did well {quce benk
faciebat)y tried to console his father. But why so ? Who but
Anselm could put an end to his distress and turn his dis-
appointment and compunction into happiness by consenting
to make a figure in the world ? During his more cheerful
intervals he no doubt desired his son to essay a feat of
horsemanship, or practise some of the sports which were so
eagerly pursued by the gallants of that age ; and the young
man complied — complied, but with a hardly checked tear
at thought of her who had once been to him what the
anchor is to the wayward skifY; complied, but with an in-
ward regret after the gardens of Divine recollection and
repose which invited him, but all in vain, to their sacred
shelter ; complied, and did his best to please ; but succeeded
so indifferently well i^erperam faciebat) that the furibund
father, who had cursed his son's bootless consolations, cursed
now with tenfold bitterness an inaptitude which told him
only too plainly that the time had passed away for trans-
forming the studious, contemplative, ascetic youth into a
mere man of the world.^ Anselm, thus assailed, was unwise
enough to administer the anodynes of sanctity to transports
of rage. Had he confronted upbraidings and reproaches
with anger or sullenness, Gundulf, if surprised, might at least
have ventured to hope for some measure of eventual success ;

' ' Ut seque vel cert6 magis ea quae bene sicut quae perperam faciebat inseque-
retur. ' The correlative of bene is male, that of perperam is rccth ; but recti and
perperam have no necessary moral meaning. Eadmer doubtless chose bene and
perperam of set purpose. Ea quce bene faciebat means his good actions ; ea qua
perperam, his inadvertencies or mistakes. Thus, if you put a shoe on the wrong
foot, or touch a piece on the chess-board without intending to move it, you act
perperam.

GUNDULF'S RAGE, 65

but, alas ! Anselm was a saint, or at least a saintly youth,
and indiscreet enough, like David harping before Saul, to
imagine that gentleness would disarm a fury which almost
assumed the symptoms of demoniacal possession ; indiscreet
enough to display an exasperating patience ; indiscreet
enough to make it evident that the piety practised, and
practised unbrokenly, from the time of his celestial vision,
stood him now in good stead. Precisely so ; his piety was all
so much oil poured upon a conflagration. True indeed it is
that, when persecuted, to pray for the persecutor, or, when
struck on one cheek, to present the other, are acts of infinite
value to the sufferer ; but they are acts which convince the
persecutor that sanctity is incorrigible, and have not unfre-
quently lashed exasperation into frenzy.

Gundulf was at length driven into such extravagances of
conduct by his ungoverned and perhaps ungovernable vio-
lence, that Anselm, fearful lest some injury to his father's
good name or to his own should come of it, resolved to quit
home and country and adventure exile. To that resolution
he in later years reverted with profoundest thankfulness ;
for had he prolonged his abode under the princely roof of his
forefathers, still incapable of living in a cloister, but no
longer succoured by that maternal sympathy which had
hitherto kept alive in him the hope of doing so, he might
insensibly have drifted off — so deemed his timorous con-
science— into new habits of life, and by the time of his
father's death, which took place at the Michaelmas of 1059,
been ready deliberately to choose the career of a great
secular churchman in preference to that heroic ideal on which
Heaven had set his contemplation.

He set forth, however, not in haste nor indecently, but
equipped for a long journey and for a protracted sojourn in
distant homes ; attended, as became his condition, by a clerk,^

* This clerk was perhaps his clericus de terrd, part of whose duty it was fo
accompany, or rather follow, him to and from the cathedral when he went there

vol.. I. F

66 THE FLIGHT.

whoSe business it was to anticipate and supply his wants on
the road ; and accompanied, not improbably, by four other
members of his household, who had caught the fire of his
enthusiasm for learning and religion, the alii quidam whom
God had 'disposed to be informed by him to the doing
of His will'

The travellers descended the Valley of Aosta, and pushing
on from Ivrea to Susa, made for the foot of Mont Cenis,
where the baggage of the canon and his attendant was
transferred to the back of an ass purchased, or more probably
hired, for the occasion. They then pursued their way more
slowly, each with utmost care leading his timid horse up the
treacherous ascent.

In crossing Mont Cenis Anselm did more than traverse a
geographical barrier ; he put term to an old period of his life
and entered on a new. That life had indeed opened brightly,
with the advantages of splendid pedigree and of peculiar
favours from Heaven ; but the cloud that gathered over it in
the disappointment of his longing for a life of religious
devotion had become thicker and darker during year after

for Divine service. His proper place was on the floor of the choir below the stall
occupied by his dominus.

I suspect that Anselm's clericus was none other than Hernost, the future
Bishop of Rochester.

If it be objected that he must have had only one companion on his journey,
since he was ' iino qui sibi ministraret clerico comitatus, ' it may suffice to reply that
the others would not accompany him as ministri. But, after all, unus need serve
no other purpose than that of our indefinite article ; unus deriais being un clerc,
not ten seul clerc ; a clerk, not one clerk. This use of unus is not unfrequent.
Thus we are told of St. Odilo (Migne, S. L. cxlii. 923^) that 'in Romulea urbe
. . . uno in tempore morabatur.' And again, ' UnA igitur dierum venient ad
mensam.' St. Anselm himself speaks of ' una religiosarum personarum ecclesia '
in the sense of * a religious community ' {Ep. iv. 53) ; and in his description of
the perilous bridge {Med. i.), ' Cogita desuper pontem unum,'' ' Imagine to your-
self a bridge.' And Ptolemy of Lucca says in his annals (s. a. 1066), ' Alexander
ad instantiam dictse comitissae tradit eidem unum clericum sibi familiarem, ' * gave
him a clerk of his household. '

It may be well to apprise the reader that in any references I may henceforth
make to the Series Latina of the Abbe Migne's reprints, I shall omit as un-
necessary the notification ' Migne, S. L, '

THE PASSAGE OF MONT CENTS. 67

year of feeble health, and thicker and darker still as he
shrank beneath the coldness and the aversion and the hatred
of a father whose love he would willingly have died to win.
What, what could have been more cruel than the hailstones
of a father's wrath on such a son ? And in the midnight
and blackness of that tempest he set forth, whither he
knew not.

No wonder, then, that after so much anguish, after all
that it had cost him to resolve on flight, after his adieux to all
who were dear to him on earth — to Lambert, to Folcerad, to
his unconscious infant sister Richera — after his anxious flight
from Aosta to Ivrea, and from Ivrea to Susa, and at last the
laborious ascent of Mont Cenis ; no wonder that when the
reaction came it came with vehemence.

For a time he pursued the passage of the mountain with
sufficient cheerfulness. But the physical exertion was new to
him ; he was unequal to great fatigue ; the provisions for
the journey were exhausted ; and as unmeasured, mono-
tonous wastes of snow stretched drearily above, below,
around, his strength failed. The memory of his griefs
revived, his heart sank, and the heat that succeeds emotions
too deeply stirred began to burn in proportion to his weari-
ness ; he spoke little, for speech was difficult with a tongue
so parched as his, and clutched up handfuls of snow if even
so he might slake the fire that was raging in his veins. His
alarmed attendant, who knew that in regions of trackless
snow hunger and fatigue, faintness and drowsiness, exhaustion
and sleep may steal upon the traveller in all too rapid a
succession which he shall never awake to describe, was
persuaded that only food could save him ; but food from
whence } For their wallets were empty. In very despair
and terror he dragged their scant baggage from the ass,
and ransacked a sack of provender that had been thrown
across the animal's back, when — had some recent traveller
forgotten it, or had an angel from heaven bestowed it

68 A PRESAGE OF BLESSING.

there ? — lo ! a manchet of bread, and the bread was of an
exceeding whiteness, a whiteness like that of the celestial
food wherewith his childhood had once been refreshed in the
presence of God. Anselm ate of it, and was restored to life,
and resumed his journey weeping tears of thankfulness and
hope. Shall we wonder if in so singular an interposition of
the Divine compassion he discerned a presage of blessing on
the new career opening out before him ?

Book IL

THE EARLY RELIGIOUS CAREER, AND
THE PRIORATE, OF ST ANSELM.

71

CHAPTER I.

LE BEC.

Not long before the date of St. Anselm's birth there flou-
rished at the court of Gilbert, Count of Brionne, a knight
called Herlwin.^ Count Gilbert was cousin-german to Robert,
the contemporary- Duke of Normandy, whilst Herlwin could
boast that he was sprung on the side of his father, Ansgot,
from the first Danish conqueror of Neustria, and related
through his mother with the reigning dynasty of Flanders.
He was the highest of all at court in his lord's favour ; he was
in the very vigour of manhood ; to unusual natural endow-
ments he added a skill in arms which, even in that martial
age, won him universal and unqualified applause ; the great
Norman houses pronounced him the flower of their chivalry,
inasmuch as to the prowess of a model soldier he united the
high and refined ideal of a finished gentleman; and their
verdict was confirmed by Duke Robert and by princes beyond
the duchy, whose gates always opened as if by enchantment
to Herlwin.

He was the very pink of knightly honour, and it is hard
to suppress a regret that so few stories have been preserved
about him ; but what we have show sufficiently what sort of
man he was. Here is one of them.

At one time Count Gilbert did not behave to Herlwin
as he should have done ; and the latter, to his lord's dis-
comfiture and chagrin, retired from the court. His absence

' The materials for this chapter are derived from Gilbert Crispin's Life of Herl-
win^ from Milo Crispin's Life of Lanfranc^ from an vmpublished codex in the
public library at Evreux, and from the Nomina Monachorum Becci.

72 COUNT GILBERT OF BRIONNE,

was the more regretted when, after some little time, an occa-
sion presented itself upon which the earl, deeming himself
injured by some of the most powerful of the Norman nobility,
conceived it his duty to wipe out the grievance in blood. For
Gilbert was a man of haughty temper ; somewhat pretentious,
perhaps ; and so exceedingly vain of his relationship with
the reigning dynasty that if the world ever forgot that he
was great-great-grandson of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy ;
great-grandson of William Longsword, second Duke of
Normandy ; grandson of Richard L, third Duke of Nor-
mandy ; that, furthermore, he was nephew of the fourth and
cousin of the fifth and sixth Dukes of Normandy — the world
was to be commiserated for its neglect of some very im-
portant facts. On the present occasion, too, he was not a
little vain of his army ; its numbers were positively worthy
of such a leader ; and heralds were despatched to advertise
his foes that on such and such a day, at such and such an
hour, and in such and such a place — he gave them due
notice, that they might have every opportunity of incurring
an honourable defeat — he would convince them that he was
not a person to be trifled with. Accordingly, on the eve of
the day fixed, the field was approached by two mighty hosts,
the one commanded by Duke Rollo's great-great-grandson
and the other a confederated force formidable enough to pre-
sent all the requisite conditions for frightful carnage on either
side ; when, as Count Gilbert was already conducting his
forces up the flank of a high hill, he descried twenty fully
armed knights crossing the plain below. A hostile demon-
stration, he thought. No ; it was a choice troop of horse
collected and headed by the noble-hearted Herlwin, who,
however much injured, was not a man to stand aloof in the
hour of danger from the prince at whose board he had been
nurtured ; a return of good for evil which astounded the earl,
who received him back at once into favour and restored to
him his forfeited estates.

HERLWIN THE KNIGHT. 73

But a change was soon remarked in Herlwin.^ A Divine
flame had been kindled in that heroic breast, and already the
gallant knight's attachment to the secular state was growing
weak and cold. He passed his days in unbroken fast and his
nights in protracted vigil ; the church was his chief haunt,
prayer his principal pursuit, and his only pastime showers of
tears. He was less than heretofore at court, and indeed his
only reason for not breaking with it entirely was that he desired
to dedicate his estates to the service of God. When duty
enjoined his presence there, he was found in his place ; but
not otherwise. His zeal for knightly accomplishments was
gone.

There is little need to say that in time his position proved
to be both false and irksome, and he would willingly have
renounced the world without further delay did he but know
whither to betake himself or what form of the religious life
to adopt.

For the state of Normandy was exceptional and peculiar.
From the day in 912 on which RoUo and his fierce hosts were
made Christian in the fonts of Rouen the Dukes of Nor-
mandy had not, it is true, been unmindful of at least their
public and official duty to Christianity ; but we must not
forget that a people, whose fathers at no remote period had
amused themselves by tossing infant children in the air and
catching them on the points of their spears, and could con-
vert human skulls into drinking-cups, were scarcely to be
humanised in one short century, and that so long as their
spiritual leaders were men taken from among themselves, they
were likely to advance along their new paths at a very slow
pace. Hence it was that their bishops affected the matri-

' Here is Orderic's account of its occasion : ' Ingelrannus Pontivi comes cum
valida manu ei (Gisleberto) obvius fuit. . . . Tunc ibi quidam miles nomine
Herluinus periculum metuens, totoque nisu pro sua salute fugiens, Deo vovit
quod si de imminente periculo sospes evaseret, nuUi ulterius nisi soli Deo mili-
taret.' — Orderic, ii. 13. In quoting Orderic's Historia Ecclesiastica^ I shall refer
to M. Le Prevost's edition.

74 A CHANGE IN HERLWIN.

monial state/ under plea of perpetuating the princely or noble
families to which they belonged ; and that their monks, men
from the ranks most of them, however good at heart — for
there is no reason whatever to think them other — enclosed a
kernel of piety under a husk of exceeding harshness.

Hence, too, a difficulty of no inconsiderable gravity for
Herlwin. He knew not whose guidance to seek in the choice
of a new home and a new mode of life ; and, postponing his
entry into religion, lived on in the world as unsecularly as
he could. He laid aside his spurs, dressed himself in cheap
and ordinary clothes, allowed his hair and beard to grow un-
trimmed, sat at the same table as heretofore, it is true, in the
earl's dining-hall, but nourished himself with coarse bread and
a cup of water, while Gilbert and the courtiers fed on dainties.
Conduct like this excited no little amusement, and something
more than a suspicion of mental aberration ; much that he
did looked mad, and all was accounted such. The earl, fond
as he was of him, took part with his other knights in adminis-
tering the treatment usually adopted in such cases — threats,
promises, jeers, and blandishments — but to no purpose ; until,
perhaps as a last resource, the pious culprit was sent on
errands to courts where once he had been the universal fa-
vourite, in the hope that either pride or shame might induce
him to remove the beard, to trim the hair, to resume the
ensigns of knighthood. It is a touching story. He went

* I think, however, that it would be more correct to say that in most instances
married laymen were elevated to the episcopal dignity, not that bishops took to
themselves paramours. Thus Gilbert Crispin, Herlwin's biographer, says,
' Sacerdotes et summi pontifices [i.e. bishops] libere conjugati et arma portantes,
ut laici erant, veterum ritu Danorum universi adhuc vivebant ( Vita B. Herluini,
p. 33). By laici he means laymen turned clergymen, just as Herlwin after his pro-
fession was called a laicus, that is to say, a layman turned priest and monk ; the
idea being that they had not been educated for the ecclesiastical state. It would
seem as if a feudal lord who was also a bishop was not deemed singular in re-
garding a wife as a suitable adjunct to his secular fief; thus Archbishop Robert,
son of Richard I., * conjugem nomine Harlevam, ut comes habuit.' — Orderic^
ii. 365-

A DISGRACE. 75

obediently ; but he went not only with tangled hair, unkempt
beard, and ignoble apparel, but seated on that humble beast
of burden whose more familiar name has been repudiated by
our great lexicographer. Thus mounted, thus disguised — yet
not disguised, for there were keen eyes at every court that
soon recognised the most polished man in Normandy — his
approach excited as much pain as amusement wherever he
went. But he was unamenable to contempt and unamenable
to compassion, and, being of invaluable service to Count
Gilbert, who had no wish to lose him, remained at court even
as he was ; not permitted to leave, and not willing to leave
without permission. To please his earthly lord he frequented
the castle at Brionne ; but to please his heavenly he rode on
an ass.

At length an occasion occurred on which he found it
impossible to reconcile the claims of the two masters. Earl
Gilbert wished to injure one of his neighbours, and desired
Herlwin to carry a mischievous message to Duke Robert,
whose interest in this business was identified with his own.
Herlwin refused; Gilbert insisted, entreated, threatened, but
to no purpose ; for the juncture was of too critical a kind
for Herlwin even to hesitate. He therefore rudely broke the
bond that had so long tied him to the service of an earthly lord,
by once more and finally refusing to carry the message and
by retiring from the court. Gilbert, little dreaming that the
good man was in earnest, took it for granted that the com-
mission had been executed, and allowed a day or two to pass
before going to receive his cousin's answer ; when, to his
infinite mortification, he found that no message had been
delivered. This was too much for Duke RoUo's great-great-
grandson, who in a transport of rage ordered Herl win's estates
to be escheated, and the goods and chattels of Herl win's poor
dependents taken from them.

For himself, Herlwin could not take this to heart ; but the

76 A RECONCILIATION.

prayers and tears of his poor people left him no rest. He
therefore, after a few days' interval, presented himself before the
earl to plead their cause. The whole court was assembled,
and the recalcitrant knight had to endure a volley of re-
proaches from men who vainly thought that he had come to
justify himself for his late disobedience. He quietly set aside
a few irrelevant charges, and then continued, 'As for my
possessions, take them and distribute them, no matter how, if
only these poor people, who have done nothing to deserve
your displeasure, have their things given back to them.' The
earl's heart swelled, for wonder and pity had taken hold of
him ; and, calling Herlwin aside, he implored him to explain
this great change in his conduct. What did he mean "> What
was he bent upon > ' I have, by loving the world,' was the
reply, ' and paying court to you, all too much neglected God
and neglected myself ; my heart set upon the concerns of the
body, I have received no discipline for my soul. So then, if
ever I have deserved well of you, let me pass the remainder
of my days in a monastery. Let me but keep your love, and
devote to God with me all that I once had.' The sitting of
the court broke up ; for Gilbert could restrain himself no
longer, and, retiring to his own room, broke into a flood of
tears. The earl wept for his faithful follower; the knight
wept for the lord he wished to quit. The desired permission
was only gained by dint of long and earnest entreaty ; but
no sooner did the * love strong as death ' win its victory than
Gilbert, who had once lavished affection upon Herlwin as his
favourite dependent, not only gave him full power over his
own person and estates, but, treating him with as careful a
respect as if he had been a social and territorial superior, kept
him at Brionne in the quality of a guest to whom all honour
must be paid, and finally bade him farewell, invested with the
absolute ownership of the estates he had inherited from his
father, and, in addition to that, with seigneurial authority over
his two brothers, Odo and Roger; * because, although by

HERLWIN'S FIRST ABBEY. ^^

birth they were Herlwin's equals, it was no insult to their
rank or to their persons that he should be made their legal
superior now that he was raised to a higher rank than they
(in virtue of absolute ownership of what had hitherto formed
part of the Earl's alodium), and in virtue of a true nobility
(the vera nobilitas of such as leave all and follow Christ) set
above them.'

All this took place in the year 1031.

Amongst the other estates of which Herlwin had the pro-
priety was Malleville, the dowry of his mother, Eloise, on
her marriage with Ansgot ; and a third part of the adjacent
manor of Burnencville or Burneville,^ a place some five miles
east of Brionne. It was upon the second of these that he
soon resolved to build a church and establish a religious
community.

He was at once master of the works and workman. He
dug, as well as marked out, the trench for the foundation,
and carrying off the dug-up soil, collected his own building
material ; material plentiful enough then, as now, all over the
vast upland plain on which Burneville lay, and now, as then,
employed generally by the masons of the district, siliceous
nodules, gravel, and chalky marl ; and carrying them on his
own shoulders to the site, sorted and arranged them, and
finally built a church of them, flint predominating in the
lower part of the walls, and in the upper part clay. He took
but one scant meal in the twenty-four hours, and that after
his manual toil was over ; except, indeed, on fasts, when he
ate nothing ; and then set to work again in another way ; for
to be a monk he must be familiar with the Psalter ; to know
that he must be able to read, and to be able to read he
must begin with the alphabet itself; a lesson learnt to such

• Burnencville. This is undoubtedly the spelling in the Evreux codex. The
modern name Bonneville, like many others, is a manifest corruption, suggested
perhaps by Malleville, the name of a neighbouring village. Thus the name of
the neighbouring wood or boscum * quod dicitur Roboretum ' has been transformed
into Bosrobert,

78 A SAD EXPERIENCE.

effect that, in course of time, scholars Hke Lanfranc wondered
not only at his acquaintance with the text of Holy Scripture,
but at his intimate knowledge of its hidden wealth. And
when, far in the night, his studies were brought to a close
there were prayers to be said, which left him little time for
repose before the morning's labour should begin again of
carrying flints, gravel, and marl for the erection of his poor
little church.

But his architectural labours, if architectural they may be
termed, for nothing could have been humbler and ruder than
the whole thing, were suspended from time to time, at least
in frosty weather. On one of these occasions he resolved to
visit a monastery, the name of which is not recorded, so as to
gain some experimental knowledge of the claustral life, and,
invoking the benediction of Heaven, set forth, penetrated with
a sense of respect, which improved into trembling awe as he
approached the sacred edifice, and then, as he at last found
himself at the very gate of the cloister, into palpitating
terror; fitting emotions for the mortal who is presently to
have a glimpse of paradise. The gate was open, and in he
stepped ; for who would ever think of asking leave, should
he find the gate of paradise ajar } ^ He trod lightly, and was
breathless ; for he thought he should see a vision of angels,
gravely scapulared indeed, and to outward eye not unlike
the children of humanity, but to the cleansed vision beings of
supernatural sort, all tranquilly enclosed in a low-browed
corridor. Alas that the truth must be told ! His expecta-
tions were disappointed. Those monks were men, and very
disorderly men to boot. He stood rooted to the pavement,
bewildered and not knowing what next to do ; when the gate
porter, who had watched his tiptoe invasion and made no
doubt that he was a thief, emerged quick as lightning from
his hiding-place, struck him with one hand a sound blow on
the nape of the neck, and with the other hand clutched him

' * Velut ad ostium paradisi.'

ANOTHER SAD EXPERIENCE. 79

by his long hair as he tumbled forward, dragged him to the
gate, and then, to borrow the biographer's phrase, ' extruded
him/

The flower of Norman chivalry was not accustomed to this
sort of thing ; but, remembering that, after all, the gate porter
was a monk and he a mere laic, he controlled his tongue and
his temper, 'deeply grounded in the charity of Christ, the
charity which beareth all things.'

Bent on monastic studies, he made his next expedition
to a house of no small renown ; and, selecting a pacific
season, that of Christmas, approached its gates with a full
sense of the respect due to gate porters, and was received
civilly enough. The procession had already begun ; but there
was much about it that sadly shocked his refined tastes. The
fathers who took part in it were evidently very vain, vain
from the vanity that comes of a vulgar mind. But vulgarity
is not a celestial attribute ; and Herlwin's imagination could
hardly grasp the idea of angels in procession distributing
nods and smiles among the saints that line their path, which
was precisely what the fathers, in the midst of their hymn,
did to the laity who stood watching them ; nor was it seraphic
in the wearers of the handsomest copes to make an osten-
tatious display of their finery. Gilbert Crispin very properly
remarks that the Normans, as a people, were not yet civilised.
But Herlwin was. Hence his dismay when, as the procession
regained the church, the reverend fathers made a general rush
to see who could get in first ; and his horror when, in the
thick of the mel^e, one of the monks, who found himself too
closely pressed by another, turned round upon the offender
and dealt him, with clenched fist, a blow that sent him reel-
ing till he measured his length on the ground — flat on his
back, as we should say, but in Gilbert's choicer phrase ' teeth
upward ' {supinis dentibiis).

All this levity and impropriety so scandalised him that
he, perhaps, valued it at more than its real worth. But God

8o A REASSURING EXPERIENCE.

is good. The next night he remained in the oratory after
matins — matins were said in the small hours — and, when the
rest had all gone, retired into a remote corner to pray
unobserved. In a few minutes some one came close to
where he was. Herlwin remained still as death, and watched
him. The new comer, deeming himself alone, now stretched
upon the ground, and now resting on his knees, prayed and
wept, and wept and prayed all through the wintry night, and
until broad day lighted up the church.

Reassured by an experience like this, he returned to
Burneville, and, pulling down some cottages on the paternal
estate, proceeded to build with the materials what was neces-
sary for the completion of his monastery, now that the church
was finished.

It was in the year 1034 that, the whole structure being
now erected and fit for use, Herbert, Bishop of Lisieux, con-
secrated the church and clothed Herlwin, who had by this
time completed his fortieth year, in a cowl and hood of
unbleached, undyed, coarsely-woven wool ; a quaint ex-
aggeration, it may be, of the typical poverty of the sons of
St. Benedict, but only too just a token of the extreme indi-
gence of this new miles Christi, Two of Herlwin's own
people, Walter and Hervey by name, received that humble
livery together with their master; but there were others
ready to join the triad ; and at their head Baldric de
Servaville, Herlwin's brother-in-law, whose name stands fourth
on the list of the monks of Le Bee ; the eighth being that
of Baldric's son, Hugh, born about the year 1030, and pro-
fessed in 1037, at the same time with his father. Then, too,
it was that Herlwin was raised to the priesthood, and con-
secrated abbot of a house so miserably poor that no one
else could be induced to accept the post.^

' It is thus that I account for the white habit peculiar to Le Bee until the
year 1626. Dugdale, in his Monasticon, ventures upon some strange nonsense
concerning this white habit in his account of St. Neot's. Leland (^Collectanea,

LA BARONNERIE. 8 1

Later ages, whilst respecting the site of Herlwin's first
monastery, have perpetuated the memory of its earlier history
in the name of La Baronnerie. La Baronnerie is a plot of
land, an acre in extent and of irregular form, adjacent to the
churchyard of the village, which bears the modern name of
Bonneville, and is surrounded by precisely such a wall as
Herlwin built, a structure composed in its lower part of flint
and in its upper of a mud-like compost held together with
gravel and s^raw ; the whole surmounted by a packsaddle
coping of thatch. The enclosure contains a barn of com-
paratively modern date, used by the monks of Le Bee during
a long series of years down to the Revolution ; a row of
humble cottages, which, no doubt, occupy the site of Herlwin's
dwelling-place ; and a pond, vocal with frogs, the perpetuation
of his reservoir for such water as it might yield him. For
this morose upland plain has no fresh springs, and not the
least of the trials of the poor little community was the necessity
of fetching the limpid fluid from a source which lay five^
miles away ; whilst their estate, a very wilderness of thorns
and brambles, boasted a soil so thankless that nothing but
unrelaxing and severest toil could elicit from it a scanty
return of thin rye or a few herbs ; and the heroic band deemed
it a godsend if ever a little cheese, a little pulse, or a loaf
made of some finer grain found its way into their store-room.^

After some time, however, Herlwin was admonished in a
dream to relinquish his arid, incorrigible, and monotonous
wilderness for another site.

To reach this he must make for a point on the edge of

IV. 13) is much more to the point. Dom Bouquet (viii. 459) gives evidence
from Le Bee itself that vestimenta alba were worn there early in th fourteenth
century ; and the portraits of Lanfranc and St. Anselm, preserved in the parish
church, represent them in cowls of a dirty white colour.

' The distance to the source of the nearest stream, the brook presently to be
reached, was four miles 'as the crow flies.'

- Vestibus hutis, sumptibus arctis, membra domando,

Herbis vescentes crudis laticemque bibentes,
Pane sed adjecto quandoque siligine facto,

VOL. L ■ . G

82 LE BEC.

the plain some two miles distant to the west-south-west, and
descend the wooded slope that dips into the valley, down
which babbles the historical rivulet of Le Bee. Here, just
where the long strip of meadow land begins to broaden, and,
degenerating into a marsh that spreads north-westward,
merges into the basin of the Risle ; here, on the right bank
of the rivulet, there stood three water-mills, built upon piles
and separated by a narrow piece of rank mead from as many
cottages, which had been planted as far back from the brook
as was permitted by the narrow limits of the enclosure.
Why the enclosure had not been made higher up stream
must now be explained.

The Castle of Brionne stood on a rocky island in the
Risle ; whilst round about it as from a centre, and stretching
away to the average rectilineal distance of full three miles
on every side, there lay a territory over which the Count of
Brionne exercised sovereign jurisdiction, from the levying
of a petty custom at Pont Authou to the hanging of male-
factors upon a gallows which adorned the local Golgotha of
the Champ de Geoffroy. The limits of this territory had
been determined by measuring with a cord for the distance
of some four miles in all directions from the castle, now to
one point, now to another, now to another, and so on, the
points lying at a convenient interval each from each, and
then by tracing a boundary from point to point until a rude
circle was completed, of which Brionne was, of course, the
centre. It is scarcely necessary to say that if the boundary
line had been exhibited on a map it would have displayed
some very marked divergencies from mathematical sym-
metry, by reason, not only of the deviations from theoretical
rectitude of the track along which the cord was carried at
each successive measurement, but of the irregularities of hill
and dale.

The boundary line of this privileged domain crossed the
Risle near the confluence of the beck with that river, and at

THE FIRST ABBEY OF LE BEC. 83

some little distance above the stone bridge of modern days.
There was Pont Authou, or Pons Altoi, the Bridge of Autoy.
On leaving the river the line traversed the open for a quarter
of a mile, and then, trending eastward, ascended the tributary
for about the same distance, after which, crossing abruptly to
the right bank, it at once plunged into forest and mounted the
overhanging hill, not again to cross the rivulet, whose source
lay within the domain.

Thus the part of the stream whither Herlwin went his
way in quest of a new site was precisely that at which it
escaped from Earl Gilbert's immediate jurisdiction. The
site, it is true, was a swampy one, but he had no choice of a
better.

The land was Herlwin's own out and out ; but he had no
interest in one of the three mills, and only a third share in
the others, his brothers Odo and Roger being co-proprietors
with him. They, however, and the owner or owners of the
first either gave or sold him each his respective share of
the whole property, and he was thus put in possession
of an area barely large enough for the erection of a small
convent.

He began by building his church, and as soon as all that
was necessary had been erected brought his community
down from Bonneville.

His church was nearest the brook, lying from east to
west ; at right angles to it was the chapter house, the rafters
of which he almost touched with his head as he stood in it,
and in an attic over the chapter house the dormitory, to which
he gained access by a steep ladder with six or seven rungs.
On the northern side of the little quadrangle stood the refec-
tory ; and on the western a cellar surmounted by a loft,
which was meant to serve as a granary, but was probably
converted in course of time into a second dormitory. Besides
these there were kitchen, bakehouse, lavatory, and the other
offices, all built of the materials in vogue in the valley ; mud,

84 THE SACRISTAN'S VISION.

however, predominating considerably over flint ; whilst the
walls were supported and held together by timber from the
adjacent forest. The walls of the cloister, which was not
built before the church had been consecrated, consisted of a
timber framework filled in with plaster, except where there
were openings for the admission of light ; but the thatched
roof must have been too heavy for them, as they tumbled
down the very night after the completion of the work.
They were rebuilt in flint.

The church was consecrated in the year 1040, and on the
23rd of February, by Mauger, Archbishop of Rouen, in the
presence of Herlwin and his monks, whose numbers had by
this time swelled to a full score. Next night, so the story
goes, Dom Gotbert, or Gothbert, on rising to call the
brethren up to matins, observed that the church was so bril-
liantly illuminated that the streams of light which poured
into the sacristy, where he slept, would have shown him a
needle had there been one on the floor. This was strange,
for the community were so poor they could not aflbrd an
altar lamp and were wont to sing the night office by the
gleam of a light brought from the kitchen. ^ But scarcely had
the alarmed sacristan jumped out of his bed when he heard
voices singing very, very gently. He stepped to the door,
which opening into the church near the high altar,^ thus com-
manded a view of the choir ; when lo ! in the abbot's stall
there stood * Mary, the most glorious and blessed Mother of

' Or from the bakehouse. These two offices usually adjoined one another.

2 In monasteries of greater size and possessed of treasure the sacristan slept
within the sacred fabric. I find from an unpublished manuscript preserved at
Evreux that in the new church of Le Bee the secretarius had his bed in the
church, close to the door of the treasury. Guibert of Nogent {Vita, i. § 25) tells
of a procession of ghosts, who entering a church, walked past the bed of the
custos ecclesicE and crossed the building between the choir and the high altar.
And in the early days of St. Martin's at Tournay, when there was as yet no trea-
sure to guard, the monk who was to ring the bell for matins, sicut ejusdem officii
moris est procuratoribusy had his bed within the walls.— Herman, J9^ i^^j-/. Abb.
Sti. Martini Tornac.

LANFRANC OF FA VIA. 85

our Lord, and in front of her the most blessed Apostles Peter
and Paul, and a third saint whom he did not recognise, singing
matins before her.' Seeing this, he thought he would go round
to the choir gate so as to have a nearer and better view of
those most glorious persons and enjoy the singing. He did
so as gently as possible, * and on tiptoe as it were ; ' but
before he could reach the choir-gate the light vanished
and the voices died suddenly away. * But there was such a
sweet perfume in the air that when the brethren came in for
the office they were fain to make signs to each other to ask
what it meant.'

Two or three years later — that is to say, in the year 1042
or in 1043 — Lanfranc, the illustrious Pavian, who had for some
time been lecturing at Avranches, set forth from that city on
a journey to Rouen, attended by a single companion, a
clericus or clerk, whom he seems to have employed to relieve
the drudgery of his school or lecture room. His baggage
seems to have comprised all his movable property ; in which
case he can have had no intention of returning to Avranches,
and was not improbably bent upon carrying into effect the
resolution which he had now for some time made, of ex-
changing the secular state for the religious. He was un-
certain, however, whether to live as a recluse, as a hermit,
or as a monk, but had made up his mind that, should he
choose the cloister in preference to the hospice or the her-
mitage, he would enter some obscure little monastery, none
of whose inmates was likely to know who he was. So then
he set forth on his journey.

Several days had passed without disturbing incident, when
one evening, as the furtive gloom already closed over the
basin of the Risle, warning him to hurry on to Brionne, he
was surprised by robbers, who took from him all he had,^

' ^ Cmicta qticB habebat,'' * omnia quce habebat,'' ^ omnia mea.'' These phrases and
the general tone of the several narratives lead me to think that he had taken final
leave of Avranches, and what the bandits took was literally all that he had in the

86 LANFRANC FALLS AMONG THIEVES.

except that, whether out of rude chivalry or from respect for
his clerical character, they spared him an old cloak as
defence against the weather and let him go forward on his
way. But he had not taken many steps before his active
memory recalled a story in St. Gregory's ' Dialogues,'
which tells how some good man in Italy, on being robbed
of his horse by highwaymen, called after them and offered
them the whip ; how the robbers on reaching the Voltorno
could by no means cross it, and how, persuaded that their
victim must be a saint, they came back and restored him
his quadruped. * Let me do the same sort of thing,' said
Lanfranc to himself, * let me turn back and offer them
what they have spared me, and then they will give me
back my all.' He acted accordingly, overtook them, mitis
ut agnus, and offered them the cloak. There was an
Italian refinement about the act which they failed to appre-
ciate ; so they gave him a cudgelling for his impudence,
tied his hands behind his back, pulled his hood well down
over his eyes, led him off to a distance past all possibility of
discovering the bridle path, and then lashed him to a tree,
but with no old cloak to protect him against the weather.
His clerk was fastened to another. Thus checkmated,
Lanfranc began to bewail his misfortune, and well he might,
for wolf and bear roved at will through the forest, and foxes
hunted their prey in packs and made short work of worrying
belated travellers. But as the night grew still and deep his
very terror was hushed and overawed by the hollow silence.
Hour after hour passed, but nothing approached to hurt him ;
hour after hour passed, and his thoughts turned from the con-
templation of his present distress to the changefulness and
transitoriness of this world's glory and the vanity of human
toil ; hour after hour passed away, and, unless the over-
hanging foliage was sparse enough and the sky clear enough

world. A sad loss to the learned of that age ; unless, indeed, they contrived to
sell his books.

LAN FRANC MAKES A VOW, 87

for him to see the constellations, he must have guessed but
vaguely the progress of the night, when, to his joy, the faintest,
tenderest gleam of reviving day lived in the air, and he, with
the devotion of one who was already at heart a religious,
began to recite the two offices of laudes nocturncB and laudes
matutiitce, now termed matins and lauds ; offices comprising,
apart from hymns, versicles, responses, and antiphons, two
lessons out of St. Paul's epistles and twenty-one psalms,
besides the Te Deum, the Benedicite, and the Benedictus. But
the task was too much for him, and he broke down, and
breaking down cried, * O Lord God, how many years have I
spent upon this world's learning ! I have wearied both body
and soul with secular studies, but I have not yet learnt to
recite the office of Thy praise. Deliver me from this trouble,
and I will try so to correct and order my life as to learn how to
do Thee service as I ought' ^ His prayer reached Heaven,

' * Voluit Domino laudes debitas persolvere. . . . Laudis officia tibi persol-
vere non didici.' Surely the phrases laudes debitce, laudis officia and the double
persolvere are sufficient to guide a careful reader to the real meaning of the passage.
The following passages are sufficient illustration of the text ; they are taken
from the lives of King Robert, St, Odo, the Countess Ida, B. Emmeram, and
B. Simon of Crepy. * Quodam tempore .... adveniente hora qua laudibus
laudaretur deus, surgit a lecto et ad ecclesiam ire disposuit ; ' ' nocturnas laudes
fraterna devotio persolverat ; ' ' factum est cum quadam nocte matutinis laudibus
persolvendis fratres interessent intererat et deo dilectissima Ida ; ' 'circa horam
diei tertiam celebrante illo canonicos hymnos et debitum officium solvente ; '
'nocte quadam priusquam fratres ad debitce servitutis officium processissent.'

Nor did the robbers tie Lanfranc naked to a tree. Virgil's husbandman is
nudus, but not naked ;

' Nudus ara, sere nudus.'

St. Anselm, in one of his dialogues, says that a monk without his tunic is
nudus, but the monk had under garments. Guibert of Nogent {De Vitd sud,
iii. 9), describes a man who has thrown away his armour as nudtcs ; *arma pro-
jecit nudumque se eorum misericordiae in modum crucis exposuit ; ' and our saint,
on his first exile from England, is said to have landed nudttson the opposite coast.
But enough of this.

The words which I render ' to do Thee service ' are tibi seivire — 'ut tibi ser-
vire valeam et sciam.' Servire and servititim are words proper to the Divine
office ; and the familiar phrases service and Divine service are a literal trans-
lation of the monastic servititun and servitium Dei. Thus in the Life of Boso,
fourth abbot of Le Bee, we are told that Anselm, observing him to be sollicituni
ad opus Dei .... instruebat enm in Domini setvitio. I shall have some-

88 LANFRANC SEEKS LE BEC.

for presently he heard the sound of travellers and shouted to
them ; but they, haunted no doubt by visions of hungry
wolves, were so terrified that he was obliged to redouble his
appeals for help and thus assure them that the voice they
heard was a man's voice. They made for him, and, on learning
who he was and what had befallen him, loosed his bonds.
He now begged them to direct him to the meanest and hum-
blest monastery in the country-side. * There is none humbler
and meaner,' they said, 'than one which a man of God is
building not far from here,' a little bit of a place, they ex-
plained, extremely poor, poor even to contempt. The monk
who was employed on it— and it was a sorry bit of building
—had not long quitted the world ; his name was Herlwin.^
So saying they pointed out a track which led down to the
river towards the sunrise, and pursued their journey. Good-
bye, then, to the world. Let the dead bury their dead.

The track pointed out by the travellers led him down to
the Pons Altoi^^\i\Q!i). I have already mentioned as facilitating
the passage of the Risle where the boundary line of the
comitatus Brionensis crossed that river, and, gaining the oppo-
site bank, made for Herlwin's little encampment, which lay
half a mile off in the marshy open. The time was early

thing to say about opus Dei in another chapter ; that and serviiium Do7nini are
one and the same thing.

When Bishop Wulslan on a well-known critical occasion was favoured with a
brief interval of seclusion for the preparation of his defence, he, instead of thinking
about such mundane trifles, exclaimed, ' Why, we have not sung nones yet ! ' His
friends remonstrated ; let them first settle the business in hand ; there would then
be time enough, and more than enough, for singing nones ; the King and his great
men would think he was playing the fool with them. 'No, no,' said Wulstan,
' we will first do the service of God [Dei servitiufu), and then turn our thoughts
to men's quarrels.' Whereupon they sang their hora nana. The ' Divine ser-
vice ' which they performed was the canonical office. — W. M., De Gest. Pontif.,
De Ep. Wigorn.

In snort, Lanfranc's servire iidi means *to say my office.' And, indeed, this
is manifest from the sequel. * Non oblitus quod in nocturna captione promiserat . . .
in discendis ojfficiis .... curam maximam impendere voluit, ut sciret Deo laudis
sacrijicium persolvere, sicut voverat.''

' ' Ccenobiolum quoddam pauperrimum et despicabile, quod a quodam monacho
nuper con verso de saeculo quoquomodo edificabatur, qui dicebatur Herluinus. '

LAN FRANC, A POSTULANT. 89

morning, and lauds had been said in the church, but not prime.
He entered the precinct and asked for the abbot. Some one
pointed to an outlying structure, and he approached it. It
was merely a one-room cottage of modest dimensions, intended
for a bakehouse, and it had in the further wall an opening too
small for a doorway. When Lanfranc reached this outhouse,
Herlwin — so chance would have it— had crept through the aper-
ture just mentioned and was constructing a rounded chamber
or lean-to of mud.' This little chamber was to be the oven ;
Herlwin was standing upright in it, for its low hemispherical
roof or coping was not begun ; but neither of the interlocutors
could see the other. The stranger approached the opening
and asked who was the abbot. ' I,' said Herlwin from his
retreat, his hands covered with rnud ; * but why do you ask } '^
* Because,' answered the stranger, ' I wish to become a monk
here, if it be God's will and yours.' ' Are you clerk or lay-
man .-*' inquired Herlwin. 'Clerk, a teacher in schools, an
Italian ; my name is Lanfranc' Herlwin stooped down, took
a scrutinising view of his visitor through the mouth of the'
future oven, and replied, * In the Lord's name I receive you ; '
upon which the other bent himself lowly down to kiss the
feet of the abbot, who refused the premature homage and
only allowed him to kiss his muddy hands. No more
was said, for the rule of the order forbad conversation at
that period of the day ; but Lanfranc threw off his habit
and set to work with a will, notwithstanding the adventures
and fatigue of the night, to help Herlwin and such others
as were there to build the oven. The work was finished by
the hour for prime ; office was said ; and then the brethren
in chapter assembled heard from their abbot's lips of the
demand that had been presented by their clerical visitor.

* Precisely thus are ovens built to this day in the valley of Le Bee.

2 This account, taken from the Evreux codex, differs from the other two
hitherto published ; it is incomparably the most probable of the three. It was
written by a Le Bee monk, who had received his information from contemporaries
of Lanfranc.

90 LAN FRANC, NOVICE AND MONK.

Their concurrence granted, Herlwin gave the postulant the
formal welcome which that concurrence warranted him in
according, and presented him the book of the rule to read.
When Lanfranc had had time duly to peruse the rule he was
admitted to the novitiate, and after some few days his name
was inscribed in the list of the professed monks of Le Bee.
It was the thirty-fifth.

Mindful of his vow in the forest, he now spared no pains
in learning the day and night offices with even greater
accuracy than the rule of the order required, and rejoiced in
the thought that at last he was an unknown man. He lived
as men may in small communities, very much to himself ; and,
though thrown with others, was almost a solitary ; for there
were only one or two in the house to whom he ever spoke,
and that he did very rarely. And his brethren, as they noted
him day by day in the cloister, seated apart and alone, some-
times lost in thought, sometimes shedding tears over the
sacred page that lay on his knee, but always the model of
meekness and a placid melancholy, little dreamt that he had
once made a noise in the world. They used to speak, poor
simple men, in later days of this pious fraud of the Italian,
sustained through three long taciturn years, and how, for
example, he would never read a lesson in the church unless
he had first rehearsed the task under the guidance of the
cantor, or how once, when desired by the prior to mispro-
nounce a word, he had mispronounced it.

Still, those years of incognito were years of peculiar trial
to Lanfranc- Undoubtedly the men amongst whom he lived
were anxiously desirous to fulfil the object of their creation ;
but, only as yet in part reclaimed from barbarism, the
majority of them were by an inherited necessity absolutely
incapable even of approaching, however awkwardly, the ideal
which his Hfe displayed to them ; and the lesson which the
refined and courtly Herlwin had a few years before so rudely
learnt was now taught to the high-souled and accomplished

LANFRANOS TRIALS. 91

Lanfranc ; namely this, that gentlemen and scholars are not
the only people destined to take a high degree in the next
world. It was inevitable that their equanimity should be
chafed by the presence of a man who, as their own rude
instincts told them, had been cast in a different mould from
their own ; a foreigner too, and of all foreigners a foreigner
from Lombardy — from Lombardy, the home of the arts, of
learning, of commercial resource, of maritime adventure, of
high political ambition, of all the influences which, conse-
crated by religion, were to give impulse and a character to
the new civilisation of Christendom ; and some of them
were even haunted by the apprehension that at no distant
time he might be set in authority over them. He bore his
trial for a time and then resolved to fly. He feigned an
infirmity of the stomach and induced Fulcran, the gardener,
to give him a daily supply of thistle-roots, which he ate in
order thus to grow inured to the sort of food he would find
in the desert, and was already laying his plans for departure
in the dead of the night, when the abbot sent for him. The
two men sat for a time in silence. Herlwin would fain have
spoken, but his heart was full ; the words refused to come ;
his face, at all times singularly mobile and expressive, gave
token of some unusual sorrow, and at last he burst into tears.
Lanfranc, much bewildered, threw himself at his feet and
implored him to say what was the matter. After a pause
the abbot recovered himself sufficiently to exclaim, ' Woe is
me that God should threaten me with such a loss ! Alas ! I
have lost my counsel and my help ! Often, and with sighs
and tears, did I pray and supplicate the mercy of God to give
me a man like you to advise and help me. . . . And when,
brother Lanfranc, He brought you here, I felt sure that my
prayers had been answered. I have even thought of shifting
my burden upon you ; I have hoped you would carry all its
load for me. And now, I know not why, you are going to
leave me and run away ; you want to fly into the desert.'

92 LAAFRANCS INCOGNITO.

Lanfranc was soon at the abbot's feet again, inquiring in
amazement how he knew all this. The shade of Herlwin's
sainted nephew, Hugh de Servaville, recently deceased, had
come to him in the night, clothed in white garments, as he
lay in his bed, and had warned him of Lanfranc's design.
The surprised culprit at once confessed his fault, received a
penance and absolution, and vowed never to forsake his
abbot, but to obey him well for the future.

He lived on, therefore, at Le Bee, still unsuspected by his
brethren. Herlwin had, it is true, either known or suspected
the quality of his visitor from the very moment of their first
encounter, one standing in the bakehouse, the other in the
oven ; but not so the rest of the community. Many of those
men must have entered religion before Lanfranc opened his
school at Avranches ; but in any case what should people of
their class know of such a man as he } The inhabitants of
the remotest village in our island know much more about the
Master of Trinity than the monks of Le Bee, shut up in a
cloister and isolated from the world by marsh and forest, can
have known of Lanfranc. They, though at the best they were
nojt multilm litterati, could read after a fashion ; but they had
nothing to do with the rhetoric, the dialectic, and the other
liberal arts once taught by him at Avranches. Had some dis-
tinguished clergyman, indeed, followed him into religion at
Le Bee, or some schoolmaster, or some member of the haute
noblesse^ Lanfranc the Lombard might have been recognised ;
but such were not the men to pass by Jumieges and Fecamp,
and Mont St. Michel, and a host of other great houses, and
search for a place without even a name ; a place hidden from
human sight, a place the very synonym to the few that knew
it for all that was poor, and obscure, and mean.

He lived on, therefore, at Le Bee, the world forgetting, by
the world forgot, when one fine day the world was startled
out of its propriety to hear that the dead was alive, that the lost
was found ; that Lanfranc, the great magister^ who, leaving

LE BEC SUDDENLY FAMOUS. 93

Avranches three years ago, had fallen a victim to a wolf or a
bear somewhere on his way to Rouen, had reappeared on our
earth ; that he had grown very thin, that he was very ema-
ciated, very sparing in speech, and not a little sanctified ; that
he had reappeared in quite a new character, a Benedictine of
Benedictines ; but still that he had reappeared. From that
day his unknown, unnamed retreat was the most famous place
in Normandy ; from that day the lowly walls and thatched
roof of Le Bee were familiar objects to the noble and the
learned of all Western Christendom ; from that day its gates
were sought by scions of the best families of Normandy,
Brittany, France, Flanders, Gascony, and Provence, and by
the most famous schoolmasters in Christendom ; all anxious
to hear the resuscitated Lanfranc lecture, and all eager to
carry away the sacred flame and communicate it to other
minds and other hearts.

The Prior of Le Bee — for he seems to have been appointed
to the office about this time ; and the appointment was
approved by the unanimous suffrage of the monks, who could
now admire and revere the object of their recent mistrust and
aversion ; so true is it that men in false positions are always
disliked — the Prior, thus invaded, was constrained to open a
school for externs so soon as lodgings could be provided for
them.

It flourished for some seven years, although they were not
seven years of uninterrupted teaching. For Lanfranc spent
part of the autumn of 1049 at Rheims, where he took part in
the famous council convened by Leo IX., in which that
pontiff, amongst other efforts for the restoration of ecclesiasti-
cal discipline, and so for the reformation of the public morals,^
forbad once more the espousals of persons connected by the
tie of consanguinity, and issued a special prohibition against
the contemplated marriage of Duke William and his kins-

' ' Ipse igitur . . . concilium tenuit . . . et salubria decreta quae jam antistites
et presbyteri nesciebant renovavit.'— Orderk, i. 183, 458 ; ii. 398.

94 THE DUKE AND THE PRIOR.

woman the Princess Matilda of Flanders.^ Early in 1050
we find him at Rome, summoned thither on occasion of the
recently divulged heresy of Berengarius, and he remained in
Italy until the assembly of the Council of Vercelli in the
following autumn. Nevertheless his labours, although un-
continuous, were sufficiently active, not only to sustain the
new character he had given to Le Bee, but to win to its
cloister postulants from the social and the intellectual aristo-
cracy of Europe — not many indeed, but still enough to hold
things in readiness for what in modern phrase would be called
a new departure.

Meanwhile Duke William saw much of Lanfranc during
part at least of his long siege of the Castle of Brionne,*
whither Guy, Count of Burgundy, had retired after his defeat
at Val es Dunes,^ and the two men soon established a friend-
ship in which the wise counsels of the monk were repaid by
the filial reverence and dutiful obedience of the prince.

But no sooner had the Duke, in the year 1053, consum-
mated his uncanonical espousals, than Lanfranc's horoscope
betokened an approaching crisis. Men were not wanting who
made it their business to inflame the prince against his best
friend ; and, unless history has maligned that lady, Matilda
herself directed her spiteful regards towards the Prior of Le
Bee. Chief, however, amongst the mischief-makers was a
court chaplain, * a man of small mind ' and scanty culture,
whose reputation for learning, at one time great, had suddenly
paled on Lanfranc's first appearance in the duchy. His name
was Herfast.

* The reader who is interested in this subject will find something about it in
the Appendix.

2 This famous castle was on an island in the river. The road from the railway
station to the main street of the modern town crosses the island. On the destruc-
tion of the castle in 1090 a new site was chosen on the cliff which overhangs the
eastern bank of the river. Orderic says that William reduced it in tribits annis ;
by which, as I hope to show in the next chapter, we must understand two years
and a fraction.

^ Herlwin's old friend, Count Gilbert, died by violent hands in 1040.

AN UNWELCOME AUDITOR. 95

But a few words about the abbey are here necessary by
way of explanation. Count Gilbert had now been dead for
more than twelve years ; but before his death he had given
Our Lady of Le Bee the whole of the wooded hill-side which
overlooked the right bank of the stream for a distance of
three miles above the monastery. At the upper or southern
extremity of this strip of land, and where the hill-side sub-
sides into a gently sloping glade, across which the high road
from Brionne to Rouen now runs, there was a grassy enclosure
shut in, save on the side washed by the stream, by a thick-set
fence or palisade. There a few cattle grazed ; there, in a
barn, the monks' harvest was, year by year, stored up, for
this spot was easy of access from all their arable land as far
as Bonneville ; there, in a mill on the water, their corn was
ground ; and there, in a chapel dedicated to St. Martin, the
holiest rites of our religion were constantly celebrated for the
benefit of the neighbouring peasantry. It was called the Park.
A church path led from the chapel, the chapel of St. Martin
du Pare, to Neuville, which lies a few miles off above the
course of the beck, and Gilbert's successor at Brionne, Guy of
Burgundy, gave Herlwin all the land that lay between the
church path and the water. But enough. Let us return to
Duke William.

It would seem that, in the autumn of 1053, the young
prince brought his uncanonical bride down to Brionne, having
in his train Herfast, who lost no time in announcing his inten-
tion of attending Lanfranc's lectures. Term must just have
commenced when one morning the chaplain rode up in great
state to the poor little monastery of mud and thatch, accom-
panied by a troop of courtiers all splendidly mounted. Lan-
franc appreciated the plutocratic effontery, and it is refreshing
to learn that he knew how to chastise it. Convinced, by the
very first remark with which the gracious auditor deigned to
favour him, that he knew next to nothing, the Lombard, with
grave and exquisite politeness, set an alphabet before him,

96 A DISASTER.

* ferociam hominis Italica facetia illudens ; ' and oh that we
had been there to see the sight ! The exasperated clergyman
flew from the lecture room, posted back to Brionne, summoned
his brother chaplains, entered the Duke's presence, and set
forth his grievance with such adornments as convinced the
prince that it was not so much Herfast, the chaplain, as him-
self, William, Duke of Normandy, who had been mocked and
flouted by the stranger. An order was forthwith issued
banishing Lanfranc the duchy. But, alas ! William was even
thus unable to satisfy the demands of a wrath which at times
spared him as little as it spared many others of his race, and,
adding cruelty to rage, he further commanded that the grange
up-stream at Le Pare should be burnt to the ground. The
order was mercilessly executed.

Whilst the Park with its little store of grain for the next
year's consumption was collapsing into one miserable heap of
ashes, Lanfranc, the joy and solace of his brethren, set forth ;
set forth provided with ' a three-footed horse,' the best beast
of burden they had to give him for his baggage, and a serving
man who was to bring the creature back when its work was
done. Crushed with stupid grief, they knew not what to do,
save ' wait in silence for the salvation of God.' Nor did they
wait in vain. As Lanfranc, on his way towards Brionne, walked
along by the side of the poor beast — it dropped its head to
the ground at every step — he descried the Duke, who must
surely have gone forth anticipating an encounter ; and when
he got near enough to salute him, did so as one who had no
reason to be ashamed. William turned away his face — per-
haps from pride, perhaps from confusion, perhaps from both,
perhaps from neither, for he was inwardly convulsed at the
sight of the lame hack — but presently looked round and
smiled good-naturedly. He was an accurate reader of men's
character, and the dignity, the candour, the openness, the
moral beauty of Lanfranc's countenance convinced him that
he had been deceived. The monk was the first to speak.

A RECONCILIATION. 97

* I am going on foot out of your province, worried with this
worthless quadruped. Give me at least a better horse, that
I may obey your orders.' 'And pray,' rejoined the Duke,
smiling, ' who is this that asks presents of his offended judge
before he has cleared himself of the charge laid against him ? '
The Prior seized his opportunity ; begged for a hearing ;
pleaded his case, and pleaded it to such effect that he was
taken into greater favour than ever ; was assured that never
henceforth should he be condemned without a hearing ; and
then received and returned the Duke's embrace and the
Duke's kiss of reconciliation.

On going back to the monastery he found his lecture room
empty, and empty it was destined to remain for the space of
some four or five years, Herlwin being indisposed to provoke a
repetition of the late disaster. Neither does there seem to have
been during that interval more than one accession, if indeed
there was even one, to the list of professed monks. The
truth is that although only thirty professions had been made
in the course of the eleven years just passed, the poor little
cloister must have been already pretty full when Lanfranc
entered it 1042, and now that a sixty-sixth inmate had been
introduced the capacity of the house was tried to its very
utmost. The refectory was too small for a party of three
score, the dormitories were inconveniently crowded, and
Herlwin seems already to have set about enlarging his
borders, notwithstanding the opposition of Lanfranc, who
represented to him that few sites would be more unfriendly
to health than that watery hollow, and that the moment had
come for erecting a first-class monastery ^ on some more
salubrious spot. But Herlwin dreaded the excitement which
would attend so vast a work ; he was no longer young, and
wished to end his days tranquilly. Lanfranc, on the other
hand, plied him with encouragements, with entreaties, with
importunities, and always, as a last resource, with remon-

' A fiiajus monasterium.
VOL. I. H

98 INCONVENIENCES OF THE OLD SITE,

.strances ; the present site was not fit for the habitation of
monks, a site so moist that every foot, at least every human
foot— for the devil had once appeared in the guise of a secular
clergyman and left no print behind him — made a mark in the
spongy soil. But the Norman had the gift of obstinacy if the
Lombard had that of pertinacity, and refused to be persuaded,
growing callous even to the incessant and unanswerable
plea that such a swampy site was not fit for the habitation
of monks. And obstinacy would have conquered but for an
unanticipated interposition in favour of the Prior. * The Lord
Abbot,' he once said, ' is wasting time and energy on this watery
site, and refuses to believe me when I tell him he should
desist from his works here and begin others in a healthier
place. May Almighty God put such an impediment in his
way as may make him listen to me and desist from wasting
his efforts on such an unsuitable site.' The idea was worthy
of the man, very devout and very much to the purpose ; and
in due time it was realised^ for in or about the year 1057 ^
sad accident befell the church in the collapse of a chamber
on the south side of the sanctuary, which served the double
purpose of oratory and of chapel to St. Benedict. Evidently
the foundations were in a very perilous condition.

'The abbot, in his grief and great agitation at this mis-
hap, found his own best comforter in Lanfranc, who approached
him and begged him now at least to acquiesce and consent
to begin building on a larger scale. Overcome at last, and
placing an unshaken trust in God, and setting an unbounded
confidence in his counsellor, by whose aid all his undertak-
ings proved successful, he began new works on a spot at once
much more healthy and much more suitable — a monastery
church, with the other necessary buildings ; a great architec-
tural pile built up in course of time, not so much of the revenues
of the house, which were still very inconsiderable, but of a
firm faith and an unswerving trust in God.*

It was in the spring, then, of 1058 that Herlwin and

CHOICE OF A NEW SITE. 99

Lanfranc and their three score monks set forth with cross,
with censer, with holy water, and with book to the newly-
chosen site of their future home. That spot was a mile
higher up the valley, and on the same side — that is to say,
on the right bank — of the rivulet, whose waters in that part
of their course danced merrily down from south to north
under the protecting shade of forest trees. A clearing had
been made in the wood, part of it on the very declivity of
the hill-side itself; for damp must be shunned, and, besides,
Lanfranc had brought with him from Italy, and particularly
from his own Pavia, majestic ideas of ecclesiastical art,
and he meant to avail himself of this rise in the ground
to give a dignified elevation to the sanctuary, and behind
that to the high altar. With cross and censer, with holy
water and book, they come singing through the glade ;
they enter the open space ; they range themselves in two
lines, on this side and on that of the trench, into which
Herlwin will presently place the first stone of his new church,
and then Lanfranc the second. As we scan them one by
one we recognise each in his turn, for we know their names.
We know which is Walter, which is Hervey ; here they are,
close to the abbot. We know Baldric of Servaville ; he
is not far off. There, too, fourth from Herlwin, on his left,
is Roger, who will some day be Abbot of Lessay, and who,
twenty years hence, will close Herlwin's eyes. Fourth, again,
from Roger's vis-d-vis is a young man of some three-and-
tvventy years, with an earnest, intellectual face ; no common
person. Ever since he was ten years old Lanfranc has been
teaching him ; he is just now his favourite pupil, and some
fifty years hence, when the abbot and the prior shall have passed
away, Vv'ill have something to say about both the one and the
other of them which no one now suspects. At like distance,
again, from Dom William, stands Dom Norman, another of
the younger generation ; he too is training under Lanfranc
for high place, and will one day be Abbot of Ivry. Almost

H 2

lOO THE SECOND ABBEY OF LE BEC.

opposite him is Fulcran, who for thirteen years has marvelled
at Lanfranc's wonderful recovery from a severe indisposition
and sudden abstention from the thistle-roots which were curing
him. Let us hope that Fulcran's garden has fewer specimens
of that esculent now than then. Yes, indeed, we know, or
can easily determine, the name of each of these sixty men as
we look down the lines, and we know more than the names of
not a few of them. There we recognise Albert and Farman,
the courageous defenders of the rights of their house at a
future time ; there, again, is Durand, another Abbot of Ivry,
and Walter, who shall govern Evesham, in ioggy England
across the sea ; and here, amongst the singing boys, is Gilbert
Crispin, a sweet lad of thirteen. Little dreams Gilbert of an
abbey he shall one day govern hard by the Thames ; little
dreams he that through slowly rolling centuries his tomb shall
be pointed out in the cloister of Westminster.

But the first stone is laid, and the second ; and the pageant
passes out of sight with cross, with censer, with holy water,
and with book. One of the most momentous of human
undertakings was now fairly begun ; thanks for this in a great
measure to Gilbert Crispin's father, who, in devoting him to
the service of religion, had with him given the abbey no
insignificant endowment in land, and v/ho was to keep up a
lively interest in its welfare during the remaining years of
his life ; thanks, too, and in still greater degree, to Lanfranc,
who was not long in gaining permission from Herlwin to
reopen his exterior schola. The fees would help to pay the
workmen, who, no doubt, were countrymen of his own.

But Lanfranc had not been many weeks engaged in his
lecture room when his labours were discouraged, and possibly
suspended, by the arrival of very depressing news. The
Pope had laid Normandy under interdict for the offence com-
mitted by William and Matilda now nearly five years ago.
The next news to be feared was that the offenders had been
excommunicated.

lOI

CHAPTER II.

ST, anselm's religious vocation.

There is a passage in Robert of Torigni which seems to
imply that Lanfranc had not long been lecturing at Le Bee/
when Anselm, still a mere boy, set his heart upon the journey
which, as we have seen, was only to be undertaken ten years
later ; in the early spring, that is to say, of 1057.

But why undertake it when he did, if Lanfranc's school
had been closed ever since the autumn of 1053 ? An answer
to the question is supplied by William of Malmesbury, who
informs us that when Anselm, after traversing the Alps, was
anxiously debating with himself whither to go, the Divine
compassion soothed his distress by directing him to Lanfranc.^
Precisely so ; the great Lombard was not keeping school
when Anselm gained the foot of Mont Cenis, but the fugitive
was at that critical moment inspired to direct his course
towards Normandy, so as to receive early news of the re-
sumption of lectures, which he now felt sure had not been
discontinued for ever.

He therefore made for Lyons. Lyons was still famous
for her school of philosophy, and there was not a city on this

* * Sanctus Anselmus . . . disertorum studiis magistrorum in brevi Deo
donante cogequatus, et per divinam visionem ad sedes coelicas denique in spiritu
raptus, salutis suae arcana verba confestim audivit quae non multo post tempore
devote complevit audiens igitur famam magistri Lanfranci.' — Rob. Tor. Chron.
s. a. 1060.

2 'Eva sis Alpibus cum volutaret anxius animi quo tenderet divina dignatio
fluctuantem serenavit Northmanniam ad Lanfrancum eundem cum quo si morare-
tur et patriae necessitudine et litterarum fomite incolatum levigaret.' — W. M.
De. Gest. Pont. lib. i.

102 THE JOURNEY THROUGH BURGUNDY.

side of the Alps in which secular teachers and lecturers could
be found at once more efficient and more numerous.^ But it
is not likely that he lingered there, for an aspirant to the cowl
of St. Benedict would be indisposed to frequent a school
taught by any but monks, and, besides, his most trustworthy
information about Lanfranc's movements was to be had in
monasteries. His first resting-place, therefore, must have been
Cluny, which lay at no great distance from Macon. Cluny was
the pride of Burgundy, and ranked as queen among the
numberless houses of religion that for a century past had
sprung up, as if by enchantment, between the Alps and the
Contentin. Founded in 910 by William the Good, Duke of
Aquitaine, it had been enlarged and partially rebuilt by
St. Odo, its fifth abbot, the archangelns inonacJiorum, and was
destined, under his successor, St Hugh, who now ruled it, to
assume proportions and a grandeur as yet without precedent
in the annals of Christian architecture. The austerity of the
life led by its inmates, who in winter allowed themselves but
one meagre meal in the course of the day and remained in
the church by night from twelve o'clock till sunrise, was only
equalled by the rigour with which they observed their rule ;
and yet that rigour and that austerity drew to Cluny such
crowds that, when Anselm went there, it was well-nigh im-
possible to conduct the processions ^ in seemly order, or even

* St. Mayeul's biographer tells us that ^ non timuit accedere Lugdunenseni
ad aramJ' This allusion to the well-known lines of Juvenal —

* Palleat ut nudis pressit qui calcibus anguem,
Aut Lugdunensem rhetor dicturus ad aram' —

must not be too strictly interpreted, it is true ; but, as the writer goes on to call
Lyons the 'nutrix et mater philosophise,' and declares that there the 'arx totius
Gallise ' was to be found, and as there is no doubt that in the thirteenth century
it boasted a famous school of law, we may reasonably, I think, believe that during
the interval it retained its reputation as a secular seat of learning.

2 Cluny was famed for its processions. As Bethlehem was famous as the
birthplace of our Lord, Jerusalem consecrated by the Holy Sepulchre and for ever
illustrious as the resting-place of so many martyrs, so Cluny was described by the
founder of Fontevral as the ' supremum monasterium ' in which * pulchrse fiunt
processiones.' — Vita B. Roberti de Abrissello.

CLUNY AND DIJON. 103

to find standing room in the choir. Wise men and simple,
nobles and commoners besieged the gates of Cluny, yearning
to share the penances and the joys of its tranquil inhabitants ;
and in their train were children eager to call the young abbot
their father — Hugh was at this time little more than thirty
years old — and bind themselves to him by the tenderest, the
purest, and the most enduring of bonds.

But Anselm might not be numbered among its inmates,
for he must soon have discovered that such health as his could
never endure the severities of its terrible discipline, and that,
even though its cloister were composed of sub-Alpine marble,^
and the high altar of its church were covered with a balda-
chin of silver, no aesthetic charms could avail to disenchant a
feebleness which it was his fate to carry with him to the
grave. But he bore the mortification and hoped on. Per-
haps, however, he attended a course of lectures in the schola
clericalis of Cluny ; although it is more likely that whatever
lengthened stay he made in Burgundy was made not there,
but at Dijon ; for the monks of St. Benignus, in that city, seem
to have been the intellectual leaders of the duchy, and never
failed to welcome, with a special affection, visitors from be-
yond the Alps. Some of the most illustrious members of the
community had been Italians, who, attracted by the piety of
St. William, its second founder, had come from all parts
of their peninsula to practise religion under his austere
guidance ; had come from Rome, from Capua, from Genoa,
from Milan, from Ravenna — amongst the latter St. Romuald,
the founder of the Camaldulensians — and had brought with
them not a little of the acumen and the taste of their country-
men. And although Anselm was scarcely an Italian, he was
in all probability a kinsman of St. William's, and had plenty

' St. Odilo found the cloister of wood, and replaced it by one of more precious
material, conveyed in barges from some spot in the north-east corner of Provence,
down the Durance, and thence up the Rhone as far as Macon ; probably the
green marble of Guillestre, perhaps the pink found in the same neighbourhood.
A prodigious undertaking.

I04 THE JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE.

to say about St. William's ancestral city, Ivrea. The monks,
therefore, of St. Benignus were more than willing to set at
his disposal all that they had to offer him of oral teaching, of
written documents, and even of instruction in the fine arts.
For if letters flourished at Dijon, so did architecture ; and
St. William's church, or rather system of churches,* with their
pillars and columns nearly four hundred in number, and their
hundred and twenty windows fashioned in a style hitherto
unknown in Gaul, had not long since marked the opening of
a new era with the architects of northern Christendom.

But neither might he remain at Dijon. He might not
remain there as a monk, for, severe as was the life at Cluny,
St. William had introduced something, if possible, severer still
in all houses of his creation or of his reform ; ^ nor might he
remain there as a student, for Le Bee was his lodestar.

The simplest interpretation of Eadmer's too brief account
of this period of Anselm's life is that the traveller spent a
little more than a year, from the beginning of 1057,^ in Bur-
gundy, and then resumed his long journey towards Normandy.
This interpretation tallies admirably with the fact that
Lanfranc reopened school soon after the ceremony in which
he and Herlwin laid the first stones of their new church in the
spring of 1058. And, if it be not hypercritical to interpret
Eadmer's phrase, as meaning that Anselm's journey was not
so much one journey as two, the second sudden in its begin-
ning as the first had been sudden in its ending, the interpre-

* An elaborate description of these is to be found in the Chronichon S. Bcnigni
Divionensis. Some remains of the lowest church have recently been brought to
light.

2 His strictness earned him the surnom of ' supra regulam. '
^ We must not misinterpret Eadmer's words, ' Exactis dehinc . . . ferme
tribus annis, ' and T. Walsingham's ' In GalliS liberalibus disciplinis studuit per
triennium.' Both one and the other mean two years and a fraction. Thus St.
Anselm himself, writing in the autumn or early winter of 1099, early, that is to
say, in the thirteenth year of William Rufus, as having reigned ' jam per tredecim
annos ' {Ep. iii. 40) ; and in his second exile he describes the church confided to
him as 'jam fere per tres annos desolata' {Ep. iii. 175), when the real time was
about two years and a half.

AVRANCHES. 105

tation is justified by the obvious reflection that he can scarcely
have reached the borders of Normandy before the terrible
news of the interdict arrested him like a * shadow of eclipse/
and Normandy was, for the present, forbidden ground.^

He remained, therefore, till clearer skies should shine in
France — the France, that is to say, of his age, the limited
territory of Francia Latina, at the centre of which lay Paris,
with Orleans near its southern frontier towards Aquitaine ;
for Le Bee was still his lodestar, and, having come so far, he
could not well go back. Nor was France without attractions ;
it had its St. Germain des Pres at Paris, and above all Fleury,
which boasted the relics of St. Benedict and was a devotional
centre of attraction to all Gaul, besides being famous as a
school of learning.

But, however, the summer of 1058 lapsed into autumn ; and,
whilst winter held his icy reign, Anselm had already entered
on his third year of exile. At last Easter came ; hope revived
with the blooming spring ; and, before many weeks had
passed, the Prior of Le Bee was on his way back from Rome,
with a conciliatory message for Duke William. Anselm was
soon on the move, and Orderic describes him as travelling in
the wake of the Lombard, because wherever Lanfranc might
teach — and his heart told him that teach again he soon must
in the swampy hollow near the Risle — there to him was his
land of promise.^

But Anselm reached his Canaan too soon, either because
the prior was detained at the Duke's court, or because there
was a customary vacation between Midsummer and Michael-
mas. He therefore retired to Avranches, where he passed

1 This is, of course, conjectural ; for the precise date of the interdict is not
known. For my own part, however, I have little doubt that the interdict was
published by Stephen IX. in the Lent of 1058, and a few weeks before his death ;
after which event the pontifical throne remained vacant for nine months.
Nicholas II. assumed the tiara in the December of 1058.

2 ' Lanfrancum secutus Beccum expetiit, et instar Israelitarum auro divitiisque
^gyptiorum, id est sceculari eruditione philosophorum onustus terram repromis-
sionis desideranter adiit.' — O. V. ii. 256.

lo6 LANFRANCS LECTURE ROOM.

an interval of eager expectancy, and on the very day that
term opened at Le Bee was waiting betimes at the door of
Lanfranc's lecture room.

He was not alone, however, for undoubtedly his clerk was
at his side ; and, besides his clerk, there were several other of
like rank, who had either accompanied or followed him from
Aosta.^ Alas that their names are not precisely known ; but,
if a guess may be hazarded, there is, perhaps, a Rudolph, per-
haps a Frodimund, perhaps an Ansfred, perhaps a Maurice
among them.

His heart beat high as he stood outside that lowly shed of
rude timber, flint, mud, and thatch. And, if it be true that,
after hopes alternately thwarted and deferred during many
years, his enrolment amongst Lanfranc's disciples was an event
of utmost interest to himself, it is impossible for us to forget
that issues of enduring import in the moral and intellectual
destinies of mankind were to follow from the relation now
established between the illustrious teacher and his illustrious
disciple. The disciple was to succeed the teacher first as
Prior of Le Bee, then as h rchbishop of Canterbury ; and the
friendship of the two men during nearly thirty years, the part
which each of them played in the same stirring events, their
intimacy with the same great personages, have placed them
side by side on the page of history. But though we regard
them as contemporaries, we must not forget that at their first
meeting the younger man had barely completed his twenty-
sixth year, whilst the older was already in his sixty-third.
Nor did they present a less remarkable difference in respect of
character and of endowment. Lan franc was the greatest teacher
of the eleventh century ; Anselm was to be distinguished as its
profoundest thinker. Lanfranc's intellectual mission had been
to rectify, arrange, and illustrate the learning which his age
inherited from the past ; Anselm's vocation was to lay open
new tracts of thought, and hold on high a torch for the guid-

' 'Cum aliquantis familiarium clericis.' — Robert of Torigni.

TUTOR AND PUPIL. 107

ance and illumination of the great thinkers of modem time
no less than for the frequenters of the mediaeval schools. The
one was famous for breadth and accuracy of learning, the
other for the subtilty and elevation of his speculative intellect.
And if Lanfranc had already challenged the confidence of
mankind by his prudence as a counsellor, his knowledge as a
jurist, his consummate generalship in times of disturbance and
conflict, Anselm would soon win their reverence by the clear-
ness of his moral vision, by his exalted ideal of right, by his
transparent simplicity of purpose. Lanfranc had more than
once shown himself great upon slight emergencies ; it was im-
possible that upon great ones Anselm should be other than
heroic. Lanfranc conciliated the general respect by his genial
temper, his brilliant repartee, his adroitness of management,
his versatility, his knowledge of the world ; Anselm, by an
exquisite delicacy of feeling, a profound humility, and an in-
exhaustible charity, would, in due time, challenge the love of
thousands even though his inflexible adherence to duty should
provoke the hatred of a few. The piety and prudence of the
one ensured him a welcome and a hearing in the cabinet of
princes ; the wisdom and the holiness of the other were to be
his avant-couriers to their sick chamber and their death-bed.

The Prior of Le Bee had long taken scrupulous care to
confine his studies to Holy Scripture and the Fathers of the
Church, and to use the former as his principal text-book.
Whatever he had known in earlier days of pagan literature
had for some twenty years been made to hold an ancillary
and subordinate place, as compared with those graver and
critical employments with which history has associated his
name.* And his new pupil seems to have followed his

' This statement of the biographer's is confirmed by a letter from Lanfranc
himself. ' You have sent me some questions on subjects appertaining to secular
learning. It ill becomes a bishop to spend time on such pursuits. Long ago,
and in my earlier days, I took no little interest in them, but upon my promotion
to the pastoral care resolved to have nothing more to do with them ' {Ep. -^i)-
The priorate was a pastoralis cura, and on his accession to it his Juvenilis cBtas
had passed away.

lo8 DEATH OF GUNDULF.

example at an early date ; he certainly very soon began to
emulate his industry in the correction of corrupted texts of
the Old and New Testaments, and of other sacred books.
Already his rival in secular learning, he was not slow in
obtaining an almost equal renown for critical acumen and
for habits of most intense industry. And the more brightly
the flame burnt in the ardent mind of the enthusiastic student,
the more eagerly did his master and guide add fuel to it, giving
him as many lessons as he chose to take,^ and thus making
his nights as laborious as his days ; whilst to these in their
turn more than a fair portion of toil was assigned, for he
acted as assistant lecturer, and was at all times ready to aid
the studies of his less gifted companions.

Change of scene, movement from place to place, congenial
occupation, had been of so much benefit to Anselm for the
last two or three years that he could now attempt what
would have been beyond the compass of his physical capacity
at the time of his mother's death ; and a better physician,
perhaps, than any of these things was the consolatory news
lately received from home, which informed him that his
father had died well, and in the monastic habit. Gundulf
passed away on September 29, 1059 5 ^^id the fact that
Gundulf had thus died was an assurance to Anselm that
now, at last, his was a united family.^

But pleasantly prosecuted intellectual employments be-
guiled him into a severity of living which he had little con-
templated on his arrival at Le Bee ; and it soon occurred to
him that, were he ever to be a monk, the cruelty of the cold
which it was now his lot to bear could hardly be surpassed
by the severest temperature ever likely to befal him ; and
that his diet need not necessarily be more scanty, or his

' 'Non solum quae volebat i Lanfranco legendo.' ^ A Lanfranco legere'* does
not mean 'to read books lent by Lanfranc, ' but *to attend Lanfranc's lectures,'
or ' to read with Lanfranc. '

2 The obituary of Beaumont-le-Roger contains this entry : 'iii., Kal. Octob.
Gondulfus pater Anselmi archiepiscopi. '

A PICTURE. 109

nightly vigils more wearisome, within the precincts of a con-
vent than they now were in the world.

•As soon as this idea occurred to him he began to fix
the bent of his being upon pleasing God, spurned the world
with all its allurements, and desired to be in very deed a
monk.'

' What means the habit of a monk } ' asks St. Gregory the
Great ; ' what does it mean but contempt of the world .? ' ^
Here let us pause for a moment to note a peculiarity in
Eadmer's narrative at this stage of the history. He breaks
the thread of the biography in order to set on record the con-
siderations which engaged Anselm's mind so soon as he had
formed his resolution. But that is not all ; his account of
those considerations is given in the very words of the saint
himself as he used to tell the story in his old age, and is
accompanied with a description of the saint's manner in the
telling of it. Nothing could be more graphic.

We must, therefore, violate the dramatic unities, and bid-
ding our laggard imagination fly from Le Bee to Canterbury,
shift our date from 1060 to 1108 or thereabouts. The scene
is a room in the monastery of Christ Church, and the
principal dramatis persona not a secular clergyman of twenty-
six, but a Benedictine monk who has already entered on the
eighth decade of his life — a monk, yet more than a monk ;
for he wears on his white, slender hand a ring which dis-
tinguishes him from his surrounding religious. He is seated
in his chair; and, together with a countenance of inborn
nobility and sweetness, every line of which indicates a rare
susceptibility of feeling, he has an eye lightened with a fire
that always glows, but seldom, if ever, flashes, and hair that
lies snowy white in tonsured ring over brows deeply marked
by thought and the bufletings of an adverse fortune. It is
Archbishop Anselm, now near his end, and he is speaking : —
' I said to myself, " Now I am going to be a monk ; but

' ' Quid est autem habitus monachi nisi despectus mundi ? '

no A SOLILOQUY RECOUNTED.

where ? If at Cluny, or if at Le Bee, the time I have spent
in study will have been lost. The life at Cluny is so severe
that I shall soon make a sorry figure of myself, for I have
not the strength to endure it ; and as to Le Bee, Lanfranc's
is too towering a genius for me there to be of use to anyone.
I shall, therefore, best carry out my purpose in a place ^
where I may display my knowledge and be of service to
many others." '

So does the old man speak, or rather not so much tell
his story as soliloquise his old soliloquy over again and
turn his youth's heart inside out, little dreaming that any-
one present cares to treasure its contents and describe
them. So does he speak with a sort of playful smile at
his own expense, and then relapse into a reverie, half mut-
tering, * No, I was not yet broken in ; my contempt for the
world was only in the bud, and that accounts for my not
seeing the danger. I thought all this came from charity
to others.' Then, resuming the old strain, he continues, * But
what am I saying } A monk ! To be a monk ; what ! is it
to wish to be set before others, honoured more than others,
made much of at their expense } No ! no ! Down, then, with
your pride and thought of self, and turn monk in a place
where, as is just, you will be set last of all for the sake of
God, and accounted least and unworthiest of all, and in com-
parison of all the rest not cared a straw for ! And where
can this be done } Why, at Le Bee, if anywhere. At Le
Bee I shall be of no importance ; for at Le Bee is a man
who shines with the light of a transcendant wisdom which is
enough for all of them. He will do for them all ; they will
all honour him and make much of him. At Le Bee, then,
shall my rest be. At Le Bee shall God, and God alone, be
the beacon of my life ; at Le Bee the love of God, and that
alone, shall be my study ; at Le Bee the thought of God, the

' I suspect he had his mind on Fleury, or wSaint Benoit-sur-Loire, as it is now
called.

'SCIRE MEUM: III

blissful and undying thought, shall be my solace and my
satisfaction.'

If Eadmer wrote this with dry eyes, he was less of a
monk, less of a man, than posterity has been fain to think ;
and a biographer who has studied his subject may disdain
to reply to the impious and utterly unjustifiable travesties
that have been made of it.^ ' Such,' continues the historian,
* were his musings, his longings, and his dearest hopes ; '
such, too, his victory over the temptation of a moment most
precious to the enemy of souls. If the moment was critical,
the victory was complete.

There are two short words in this wonderful soliloquy, so
touchingly made vocal after an interval of half a century,
which invite a moment's attention ; I mean the words scij^e
meum in the phrase * in tali loco in quo scire meum possim
ostendere et multis prodesse.' These very words occur in a
letter written by Anselm soon after his profession in answer
to one which must have been despatched to him while he
was yet in the secular state ; or, at any rate, about that time ;
for his correspondent addresses him as a secular person.
This correspondent, Avesgot by name, was an inmate of the
monastery of La Couture at Le Mans, and seems to have
been a scion of the house of Bellesme. Be this as it may,
Anselm had not been long at Le Bee when Avesgot, hearing
that he was Lanfranc's assistant lecturer, perhaps that he had
a sort of dame's house close to the monastery, wrote, begging
him to undertake the classical tuition of a nephew in whom
he was interested, saying amongst other things, * I can send
him to other masters, but I have greater confidence in you
than in any other man living, and should feel no anxiety
about him if he were only in the same place with you ; ' and

' Thus M. Charma could bring himself to write words like these : ' Ce n'est
pas la religion qui, dans son coeur, a triomphe du siecle ; c'est une passion qui
a vaincu une autre ; ' and again, ' alliant par un impur melange a son amour des
saintes pratiques I'orgueilleux desir de s'elever au-dessus de ses freres.' And
there are others beside M. Charma quite as bad.

112 'SCIRE tuum:

then adds, * How is it that Lanfranc and Guitmund make
more noise in the world than you ? Why will you persist in
hiding your light under a bushel ? Do you not remember
what the poet says —

Your skill is nought if others skill not that you skill
(Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter) ?

It would almost seem, then, as if Persius's scire tuum, thus re-
called to Anselm's memory, had suggested the scire meum of
his soliloquy ; it certainly finds a pretty place in his reply to
Avesgot. ' I am very sorry,' he writes, * that on the first
request you make me I am unable to give proof of my desire
to serve you. The truth is that I am not now free to under-
take the charge, nor do I contemplate or see any likelihood
of a return to my former employment, or what your charity
is good enough to regard as having been my employment.^
. . . And now for the quotation in your letter : —

Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.

* Persius wrote this to fan the love of self-display, not to
smother it ; still I make bold to answer —

Scire meum nihil est, si quale sit hoc sciat alter
(My skill is nought if others skill what I do skill).

'You ask why Lanfranc's renown and Guitmund's are
wider spread than mine. The reason is, that not every flower
has the scent of the rose, cheat the eye though it may with a
blush like the rose.'

This was not the real reason. The superscription of his
letter tells us why it was that his fame was not flying through

* The compilers of the Histoire liUeraire de la France have entirely missed
the meaning of Anselm's reply. Their remarks on it will not bear analysis,
and I need only observe that Avesgot's nephew was between twenty and thirty
years of age ; that the request was a personal one to Anselm himself, not to
Herlwin or Lanfranc ; and that what was wanted was that he should be
always under Anselm's eye. ' Habeo quendam meum r\e^oitvn. Jajn juvenem . . .
desidero eum manere tecum . . . valde securus fierem si moraretur in loco in
quo es. ' The letter is to be found in Baluze's Miscellanea, lib. ii. p. 1 74.

THREE ALTERNATIVES. 113

the world on the wings of every wind. He was no longer
'Anselmus,' but * frater Anselmus;'* no longer his own,
but another's ; and as for making a name, so far from
asking leave to lecture any longer in Lanfranc's schola
clericalis^ so far from having even the intention of doing so,
he had purposely chosen a cloister whose schola clericalis was
under so illustrious an administration that there would be no
occasion that his services should be evoked in its behalf, a
cloister in which God alone should be the occupation of his
thoughts and the employment of his time.

No, no ; the reason he assigned was not the true one.
The learning, if we may employ his own floral metaphor,
slowly accumulated by intense and enthusiastic study from
very boyhood, was dear to Anselm as is the first expanded
bud of some rare rose-tree to the gardener who has directed
all its capacity of loveliness and fragrance to the production
of one choice flower ; but, mindful of Him qui semetipswn
exinanivit, he had culled the flower and laid it at the foot of
the Crucified.

After he had chosen, and for these reasons, the monastery
of Le Bee as preferable to all others, the very question
occurred to him which had once occurred to Lanfranc,
whether, after all, the cenobitical life was for him the best.
He had heard of those vast silentious tracts on the confines
of Maine and Brittany where anchorites were practising
austerities that surpassed the ancient wonders of Upper
Egypt ; scantily clad in sheep - skins, and sheltered — if
sheltered be the word — by rickety pent-roofs of osier which
the next storm might rend and dissipate in irrecoverable
fragments.^ He had heard, too, of such charitable founda-

* The superscription of Avesgot's letter is, ' Avesgotus coenobii Sancti Petri
Culturae monachus Anselmo, salutem.' The superscription of Anselm's answer is,
* Domino et amico charissimo Avesgoto frater Anselmus, salutem.' It is the
earliest of Anselm's extant letters.

2 ' Erant autem in confinio Cenomauniae Britanniseque regiones vastae solitu-
dinis, quae turn temporis quasi altera ^gyptus florebat multitudine eremitarum
per diversas cellulas habitantium,' &c. — Vita B. Bernardi Turonensis, cap. xl.

VOL. I. I

IJ4 'OMNIA FAC CUM CONSILIO:

tions as that of St. Bernard of Menthon, who, chasing their
false gods from the Alps, not far from his own Aosta, had
there established a refuge from the glaciers ; and although he
could scarcely emulate such rigours as those — for his frame
was too fragile to tempt the storms and inclemency whether
of open plain or desolate mountain — there yet were tempered
spots easy to find where he might live all alone, with even
less risk to health than he would encounter at Le Bee ; and
he might found a hospice in an Alpine valley as meritoriously
as on an Alpine pass. His determination, indeed, was on the
whole to the life of the cloister ; but still he questioned with
himself whether he might not do better by living either in a
hermitage or in some such institution as a hospice founded
out of his own inherited estates.

* Knowing, therefore, that it is written, ** Do thou nothing
without counsel, and thou shalt not repent when thou hast
done" ("Omnia fac cum consilio, et post factum non poenite-
bis "), he was unwilling to commit himself without due advice
to any one of the modes of life on which he pondered, lest in
anything he should seem to disobey the precepts of Holy
Scripture. He had many friends, indeed, but out of them all he
chose as counsellor to whom unreservedly to commit himself
one, and only one. That one in a thousand was Lanfranc ' —
the Lanfranc, be it noted, who has been depicted as a sort
of freezing mixture, such as might be compounded out of
college don and hom.e secretary. * Going to Lanfranc, he
told him that his purpose hung undecided between three
alternatives, and that he wished to take his advice and choose
that of the three which he should pronounce the best. " I
want to be a monk. I desire to be a hermit. I am strongly
inclined to live on my patrimony, and, for the love of God,
minister of it as best I can to some i^v^ needy people.^ My
will, Dom Lanfranc, is tossed to and fro between these three

1 The author of the Histoire de V Eglise Gallicane, in addition to several
grave mistakes about Anselm's early life, has made a curious blunder on this

THE DECISION. 115

subjects of choice. I beg you to determine me to that one of
the three which is best." ' Lanfranc declined to give an
opinion, but advised him to refer the case to the decision of
Maurille, the venerable Archbishop of Rouen, their diocesan.
Anselm, long ago a monk at heart, yielded to the advice,
and, accompanied by his counsellor, set forth to present
himself before the prelate. But he did not therefore re-
linquish his confidence in Lanfranc, for had the Prior, whilst
they were traversing the wooded heights that overhang the
valley of Le Bee, said to him, * Remain here in this forest,
and take care as long as you live never to leave it,' un-
doubtedly, as he used to say, he would have obeyed him
and turned anchorite then and there. Can more be said for
Lanfranc than such a confidence }

Maurille, Archbishop of Rouen since 1055, had been re-
moved to that see from the princely foundation of Fecamp,
where he had said many a prayer at the tomb of St. William,
the reformer of monastic discipline and patron of religious
architecture. He rendered his twelve years' pontificate illus-
trious by the completion of his cathedral, parts of which are
still extant.

The Prior of Le Bee and his pupil laid their case before
the Archbishop, who promptly declared in favour of the
ordinary monastic life. His word was law, and his visitors
were ready to return to Le Bee on the morrow.

In those days the Seine at Rouen, taking its tortuous

third alternative : ' Mais il deliberat entre trois etats, s9avoir, s^il demeiirerait dans
le monde . . . . ou bien s'il se ferait moine ou hermite ' (livre xx.). Tlie learned
Jesuit must surely have known that a man may live in a convent, in a hermitage,
or in a hospice, but that nobody can be out of the world and at the same time
in it. Nevertheless Longueval's mistake has been most industriously perpetuated
by subsequent writers. Surely in cases like these, if intuition does not suggest a
probable solution of a difficulty, we should have recourse to reflection. But,
curiously enough, Longueval and his followers had no need to trust to the one or
resort to the other. John of Salisbury says, ' An enim expeteret eremum, an
claustrum monachorum, an ex proprio patrimonio domum construens peregrinis,
pro facultate, et pauperibus ministraret, habebat incertum.' — Vita Sti. Ansehni,
cap. ii.

I 2

Ii6 THE END OF THE OLD LIFE.

course further to the north than now, washed the very pre-
cinct of the metropoHtan church ; and it requires but little
effort of imagination to see the Prior of Le Bee and his pupil
putting off in a ferry ' on the morrow of their interview with
the Archbishop from close under the sacred pile, and slowly
making for the southern bank of the river. That ferry carried
no ordinary freight — Lanfranc and Anselm, each bound to
the other by the ties of a new and supernatural sympathy ;
Lanfranc and Anselm, monks both of them, in heart at least,
for the difference of garb will not last long ; and in a few
short hours Anselm will have exchanged the white dress of
the secular clergyman for a coarser habit. It is a morning in
spring, and three winters have passed since he crossed Mont
Cenis. The passage of Mont Cenis then, and that of the
Seine now, what a contrast ! That was a deliverance, un-
doubtedly, from thraldom, from suffering, from the shadow of
death ; but it was a perilous journey over solitudes of snow,
and, to one sick at heart and jaded in body, a venture into
blank uncertainty ; but this is a peaceful transit from suspense
and deferred hopes to security and a terrestrial heaven. And
peaceful influences fill his pure heart with an ineffable happi-
ness. No sound breaks the pervading calm save the confused
and harmonious din of hammer, chisel, and crane, plied by
the builders of Maurille's cathedral. He turns and gazes on
its massive but unfinished tower. Clear and hard it strikes
against the pearly sky, and stretches in vain pursuit its tremu-
lous reflection across the flood. A peaceful reverie to Anselm.
Lanfranc gazes on him with brimming eyes and an interest
too deep for words. Nor he alone ; others are watching.
Ermenberg stoops from her blissful throne, and Gundulf, who
once in weakness and rage drove him from his old home,
now pursues him with blessings to his new.

' I frankly own that on revising these pages for the press I cannot find an
authority for the suggestion that there was no bridge across the Seine at Rouen in
the, spring of 1060. I have no proof either way. So, quod scripsi scripsi.

CHAPTER III.

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE.

On reaching the southern bank of the Seine, the travellers
plunged into the forest, and followed a track just wide enough
to allow one horseman at a time to thread his cautious way-
over a russet carpet of dead leaves ; a long and tortuous lane,
where sweet and reposeful gloom reigned by day, and by
night awful darkness.

The ceremony of Anselm's introduction to the novitiate
was not long delayed, and was very simple. Led into the
chapter-house by the guest-master, the white-robed postulant
threw himself upon the floor before Herlwin, who demanded
of him what he wanted. * I beg,' he said, * the mercy of God,
association with you, and membership in this family of
brethren ; and I desire to become a monk and serve God in
this monastery ' (* Dei misericordiam et vestram societatem
et fraternitatem hujus loci require, in hoc monasterio mo-
nachus fieri et Deo servire desidero '). The abbot replied,
* Almighty God grant you association and a lot with His
elect ; ' to which all present responded, ' Amen.' This, of
course, was no answer to Anselm's petition ; it was a prayer
dictated by piety and prudence, and served as an encourage-
ment to him to listen not altogether in despair to an account
of the hardships and austerities embraced by all true monks,
and of the still heavier severities held in store against those
who might violate the rule of the order. But Herlwin was too
well acquainted with the antecedents, the character, and the
temperament of his postulant to say more than a few neces-

ii8 ANSELM'S NOVITIATE.

sary words on those topics. Anselm replied in fewer still, and
promised to endure all that might await him. Upon which
the abbot replied, * May our Lord Jesus Christ so perform in
you what for love of Him you promise, that you may have
His grace here and eternal life hereafter' (* Dominus Jesus
Christus sic perficiat in vobis quod pro amore ejus promittitis
ut ejus gratiam et vitam aeternam habere possitis'). The
monks again said 'Amen,' and the abbot continued, 'And
we for love of Him hereby grant you what you so humbly
and steadfastly ask ' (* Et nos pro ejus amore hoc tenore conce-
dimus vobis quod tarn humiliter et tarn constanter requiritis ') ;
but the words had scarcely escaped him when Anselm was
lying at his feet,^ and imprinting on them kisses, such as were
offered by subjects to their spiritual or territorial superiors.
When he had kissed Herlwin's feet he was permitted to retire
to the church, where he remained alone until the chapter
broke up and brethren appointed for the purpose of clothing
him in the dress of the order entered and cut short his medi-
tations. They exchanged the clerical for the monastic habit,
the vestis nuptialis, as it was prettily called, for the cheaper
tunic of undyed and unbleached wool proper to Herlv/in's
monastery. To this was stitched the capithim, or hood ; for
the large and ample garment to which the hood properly
belonged was withheld from novices, inasmuch as, although
its assumption was proverbially incapable of conferring the

^ We stiff-kneed English, who fail to appreciate this sort of thing, should
remember that the age in which Anselm lived was nearer to the days of Constan-
tine than ours is to it, and that prostration was one of the numerous Oriental
usages of the later Empire which were still generally observed in every corner of
Western Christendom where the Latin civilisation had been established. It was
net peculiar to Churchmen. A certain Count Aginulf once persecuted a poor
knight with such inexorable ferocity that his victim scarcely dared to show himself
out of doors, and would have persisted to the bitter end had he not the very
night after rejecting a most touching appeal for mercy seen the devil blowing the
fire and warming himself at leisure in his very bedroom. Frightened out of his
wits, he began to recite the psalter from beginning to end, and continued reciting
until daybreak, when he hurried off to the other, and falling prostrate on the
ground at his feet offered to be at peace with him, — De Mirac. S. Eimnerammi,
lib. ii.

ANSELM'S PROFESSION. 119

monastic spirit, the cuculla was the peculiar note and badge
of the monastic profession.

During his novitiate Anselm, Hke other novices, was not
allowed to read the lessons, or to sing anything in choir
alone, or to offer at the mass, or to receive the pax ; and
when he was in the cloister took his place apart from the
professed monks, and under the eye of the master of novices,
whose office it was by word and example to instruct him in
holiness of life and the duties of the order.

But his transitional life was of no long duration. Short
novitiates, even in cases less promising, or rather less mature,
than Anselm's, seem to have been one of the distinguishing
features of Le Bee in later years, when he was himself
abbot ; and there is hardly room to doubt that the ceremony
just described was within a very few days ^ succeeded by the
more solemn act of profession. Scarcely had a week elapsed,
or at the utmost a month, when, between the breaking up
of the chapter, which assembled immediately after prime, and
the ringing of the bell for mass, Anselm was invited to write
out his profession on a small strip of parchment ; the hood was
then detached from the tunic and taken away, to be fastened
to its proper cuculla ; and he awaited the further instructions
of the novice-master.

The mass was sung by the abbot ; and the usual order
was observed until, at the conclusion of the Gospel, the choir
gates unfolded, and Anselm entered, conducted by the novice-
master. This was the signal for the beginning of the Miserere
by the dexter cho7'us ; whilst the novice, with downcast eye
and 'composed mien, made for the steps of the altar, where
he lay prostrate as verse by verse, now from this side of the
church and now from that, that plaintive and incomparable
cry rose to heaven. The psalm ended, he stood up and read

' Thus Lanfranc was professed non post tnultos dies from the beginning of hi^
novitiate. Other instances will occur in the sequel.

I20 'S use IFF. ME, DO mine:

from his slip of parchment, ' Ego, Anselmus, promitto stabili-
tatem monachi et conversionem morum meorum et obedien-
tiam secundum regulam Sancti Benedict! coram Deo et Sanctis
€Jus in hoc monasterio quod est constructum in honorem Beatae
Mariae semper virginis in praesentia Domini Herluini abbatis.'
He then ascended the steps and laid the document upon the
altar, there to be preserved. Returning to his place at the
foot of the altar steps, he next called upon God, singing the
simple and pathetic words of the psalmist, * Suscipe me,
Domine, secundum eloquium tuum et vivam, et non confundas
me ab expectatione mea ; ' whereupon, with that inexplicable
sympathy of which our holy religion so well knows the
secret, the words were taken up and repeated by the whole
assembly, he kneeling the while, * Suscipe me, Domine,
secundum eloquium tuum et vivam, et non confundas me ab ex-
pectatione mea,' * Uphold me, OLord, according to Thy word,
and I shall not be confounded in my expectation.' He then
rose, and with growing fervour and in a higher key once
more raised his soul's cry to Him who alone could bless, as
He had inspired the surrender. Again were his words echoed
through the lowly church. Nor was this enough. After the
example, it may be, of Him who 'prayed again a third
time,' he urged his petition once more, singing this time in a
still higher key. Once more was it repeated by men, who
know but too well that not the least part of the monastic
ideal is fellowship, not less in each other's hopes and anxieties
than in each other's joys and griefs. After a few short
prayers, the Paternoster being said in silence, the abbot
intoned the De Profundis, whilst Anselm could do little else
than lie with his heart beating at the cold ground, in the
speechless anguish of a bliss all new to him ; a bliss and an
anguish most fittingly embodied in that unique psalm which,
if it express with equal felicity the yearning of humanity for
its Redeemer and the trembling hope of the redeemed but

r

VENL CREATOR SPIRITUS:

unbeatified Christian,^ is no less happy as the interpreter
of such emotions as must needs possess the heart of one
about to pass into such a life as it is the aim of monasticism
to foster and develope. ' Out of the depths have I cried unto
Thee, O Lord ; Lord, hear my voice. . . . My soul hath waited
on His word; my soul hath hoped in the Lord. . . .' Thus far
the ceremonies of profession at Le Bee were precisely the
same as those used at Cluny and other famous monasteries,
nor was there any difference in the three prayers which fol-
lowed the De Profundis. At the end, however, of these —
perhaps by a happy inspiration of Lanfranc's, whose joyous
nature could ill brook its absence on such an occasion — the
use observed at Le Bee directed the abbot to intone the
Pentecostal hymn, Veniy Creator Spiritus?

All caught and prolonged the strain with an unanimity
and a fervour which those who have witnessed such solemn
acts are not ashamed to own themselves unable to describe,
and which as far transcend this meagre account as the
sonorous majesty of the original puts to shame the following
attempt ^ at translation : —

Come, O Creator Spirit, come,
Make in Thy servants' minds Thine home ;
And fill our breasts with grace Divine,
Thou didst create them, they are Thine.

Lo ! Paraclete, we name Thy Name,
Thou Gift of God the One Supreme,
Thou living Fountain, Fire, and Love,
And sacred Unction from above.

' The De Profundis forms part of the Christmas office as well as of the office
for the dead.

^ There is, I believe, no evidence to show that the Veni, Creator Spiritus was
anywhere sung at ordinations before the close of the century, and I suspect that
Le Bee was the very first monastery in which it was sung at professions. Can it
be that Anselm's was the first profession in Christendom thus adorned ? Who
shall say ?

* I trust the learned may not disdain my version. It is, I think, the closest
which has as yet been made in our language.

122 THE SECOND BAPTISM.

Gifts sevenfold wait on Thy command,
Thou Finger of the Father's hand,
The Father's very Promise Thou,
Who dost our lips with speech endow.

Shed on each sense light's kindling beam ;
Pour on each heart love's quickening stream ;
Inform our corporal mould so frail
With virtue that shall never fail ;

Drive off, and keep afar, the foe ;
And peace — Thy peace — even now bestow :
So shall we, following Thee our Guide,
Turn from all harm our steps aside.

Through Thee the Father may we own ;
Grant us to know through Thee the Son,
And Thee of Both the Spirit sole
Confess whilst all the ages roll.

Glory to God the Father be !

Glory, O God the Son, to Thee,

Ris'n from the dead ! Like praise Divine,

O Paraclete, be ever Thine ! Amen.

The melodious tumult expired, and a prayer was said.
Anselm rose and was sprinkled with holy water, and the cowl
being brought to the abbot, he blessed and aspersed it and
then proceeded to perform the crowning act of the solemnity.
Removing the novice's tunic, he said, * May the Lord put off
from thee the old man with his deeds ; ' and then, clothing
him in the cowl, added, * May the Lord put on thee the new
man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness
of truth.' Anselm was a monk at last ; at last, in the bold
but suggestive phrase of his order, he had received his second
baptism.^ The abbot kissed him, and, drawing the hood

' This is a very usual name for the monastic profession. St. Odilo's bio-
grapher exclaims of him, ' Quam jocundum erat tunc videre ovem mundano
vellere detonsam de lavacro baptismatis iterum ascendentem ; ' and one of St.
Anselm 's disciples, in a letter addressed to him, speaks of the 'filiorum caterva
quos in lavacro secundae nativitatis ipsa (ecclesia) genuerat ' {Ep. iii. 2).

A SPECULATIVE EXEMPLAR. 123

over his head, dismissed him in his delirium of new-born joy
to go the round of the choir and kiss in turn each of its
members.' He then resumed the mass.^

And now that the young monk has entered upon his
hidden life, the unavailing regret may once more be forgiven
that Eadmer should not have completed those anecdota, the
compilation of which was so peremptorily interrupted by his
master ; for some of them belonged to the first three years
of Anselm's monastic life. All that he has allowed himself
to tell us is that no sooner was Anselm admitted into the
cloister than he set to work to study the lives of such among
his new friends as observed the rule of the order the most
strictly, and valued as contributions towards a model which
he must copy all that he recognised in those lives as being
most conformable to that rule. He had long since appre-
hended the ideal of religious life, but had not as yet had
opportunities for studying an exemplar. Such exemplar
as he wanted he was not long in securing, but it was an
exemplar of his own constructing.

' An opportunity for impressing upon the mind of the newly made monk the
idea, an idea as old at least as St. Jerome, that this solemn investiture with the
ctiailla symbolised a new death to the world, and introduced him to a life of
higher aims than were ordinarily contemplated in the secular state, was afforded
by the discipline which required that he should wear the cowl and keep his head
covered with the hood for three days and nights. This was one of \\\o?>& factitice
consuetudines of which St. Anselm speaks in his Similitudes as by no means
essential to monasticism but 'quibusdam de causis rationabilibus ' worthy of
observance. The hood was removed by the abbot or a deputy at the/a;c of the
third day's mass. We need not be surprised that in this continuous wearing of
the hood for some days after profession a resemblance was noted to the carrying
of the chrism cloth by a newly baptised infant ; but that was, no doubt, an after-
thought. If a strict analogy be sought, it may be found in the custom which re-
quired a newly made priest to wear the stole day and night uninterruptedly for
a certain time after ordination. Witness the following passage from Nalgod's
Life of St. Odo. 'Diem consecrationis ejus insecuta nox fueratin qua vir Domini
post quietem evigilans et suae consecrationis non memor stolam sacerdotalem coUo
suo reperit circumflexam.' A like account is given by another biographer, who
inserts the words su:uti mos est.

^ For the particulars noted in this description see and compare Udalric's
Consuetudines Cluniacenses, Lanfranc's Decreta, and John of Avranches' Liber de
Ecclesiasticis Officiis.

124 THE EXEMPLAR REALIZED,

No character was ever formed — no man ever attained the
excellence of totus teres atque rotundus — by servile imitation
of another, or by the mimicry of a method here and a
manner there. Anselm, with the true genius of a philosopher,
and, be it added, with the true genius of a poet, made no
such commonplace attempt, and thus escaped the inevitable
issue of a commonplace failure.

^milium circa ludum faber unus at ungues
Exprimet, et molles imitabitur aere capillos,
Infelix operis summa, quia pen ere totum
Nesciet.

He imitated no one ; he copied nothing. What he did was,
first, by an instinct of unerring selection, one of the rarest of
gifts, to choose out of the lives of the fifty men about him
precisely the sort of details which were most conformable to
the speculative ideal which he had constructed for himself by
a careful study of the monastic rule ; then, by the exercise of
another and as rare a gift, to form out of all these diverse and
incongruous excellencies a consistent and harmonious model ;
nor only that, a consistent and harmonious model suitable
to his own capacity ; and then, possessed thus of his specula-
tive exemplar, laboriously to fashion his life into conformity
with it. Aristotle would have worshipped him.

Thus did he form his character ; nay, so accurately and
minutely faithful was he to the religious ideal that * whoso-
ever in all that community desired to live a wholly religious
life, found before long much in Anselm's way of living which
it was worth his while to imitate. And Anselm, advancing
day by day for the space of three years nearer and nearer to
perfection, came to be deemed a hero of goodness whom it
was meet that all should respect and honour.'

Alas that Eadmer should have told us no more than this !
Alas, indeed ! for if the little that we learn from another
source concerning these three years helps to supply, as indeed

DOM GUNDULF. 125

it does, the blank which he has left, it also serves to enhance
our regret that he should have left the blank at all.

A certain Dom Gundulf had been a denizen of Le Bee
for some twelve months when Anselm made his profession
there. Sprung from one of the best families in Normandy-
ten years before Anselm saw the light, Gundulf at an early
age received preferment in the cathedral church of Rouen,
where, by the purity of his life and by austerities worthy of
a monastic cloister, he engaged the regard and won the
friendship of Archdeacon William and of Maurille the
metropolitan. It was in the interval of Anselm's detention
in Burgundy and France that the canon and the arch-
deacon made a pilgrimage to the holy places and reached
Jerusalem, * accounting as nothing the fatigues of their
journey, so entirely were their hearts inflamed with the love
of the Jerusalem that is above.' But being overtaken by a
terrible storm whilst crossing the Mediterranean on their
return, they made a vow to enter religion in the unlikely event
of their escape. Their prayer was heard, and Gundulf, upon
reaching Normandy, lost no time in finding his way to Le
Bee, where his name and that of Anselm stood ^ next each
other on the ' boards ; ' and during the short three years
which they there spent together, so intimate was their friend-
ship, and so well contested the rivalry of their endeavours
after holiness, that it is as difficult to separate the memory of
Gundulf the monk from that of Anselm the monk as it is for
the naked eye to divide the joint lustre of a double star.

When Lanfranc, in 1063, left Le Bee and assumed the
government of St. Stephen's at Caen, Gundulf accompanied
him as his prior, Anselm rising to the like dignity in his
own convent ; and when Gundulf was raised to the see of

1 In my first draft of this chapter I wrote ' seem to have stood,' The Nomina
Monachoriim Becci, with which I have since made acquaintance, shows that my
surmise was correct. They had neighbouring beds in the dormitory, and neigh-
bouring places in the cloister.

126 A SACRED FRIENDSHIP.

Rochester, in 1077— for Dom Gundulf was none other than
the famous bishop of that diocese — the pastoral staff of abbot
was already passing into the hands of his best and dearest
friend, who had not long before written to him in the
following terms : —

* You beg me b)' your messages, • you exhort me by
your letters, and by your presents you importune me, to
remember you. Remember you ! " Let my tongue cleave
to my jaws if I do not remember you ; " yea, if I have not
long ago given Gundulf the first and chief place in my
friendship ! . . . Why, how can I forget you ? Graven on
my heart as the seal is printed on the wax, how shall the
thought of you fade from my memory ? . . . When you are
silent, I know that thou lovest me {ego novi quia diligis me),
and when I hold my peace thou knowest that I more than
love thee (/// scis quia ego amo te)' ^

Gundulf was still at Rochester when his friend became
Archbishop, near the close of the century ; and the contiguity
of the dioceses, and the peculiarly close official relations of
their incumbents, cemented anew an intimacy and a devotion
which, as no separation had loosened, so now no trial could
shake. United in life, they were not long divided by death ;
for Anselm buried his friend in the Lent of 1 108, and by the
Easter of the following year was sleeping his own sleep at
Canterbury.

Hence the interest presented to us by the early days of
their friendship— one of those elevated friendships of the
cloister that for pure and supernatural love rival the
unsullied charities of heaven. ' Bound each to each so in-
timately, the younger of them would say, and rejoice to hear
it said, that he was another Gundulf^ and Gundulf another
' Ep. i. 4.

2 In conformity with this idea one of Anselm's letters (i. t,-^ opens thus : —
' Et meus Gundulphus et tuus Ansehnus testis est,' &c. An exquisite toucli which
some of the editors have strangely disfigured.

'OPUS DEi: 127

Anselm ; *' for they had in God but one heart and one soul "
(Acts iv. 32), and indulged in frequent converse on spiritual
things and in many showers of tears, whilst thus they
communed in mutual incessant exhortations to climb to
higher heights, and in a sacred rivalry which curtailed their
very sleep out of zeal to do the service of God.^ Anselm, as

' ' Sancta ut se invicem ad opus Dei prsevenirent aemulatio.' Let us first
understand what is meant by opus Dei. I have translated it * service of God,' but
its meaning is less general. Servitium Dei has the technical sense of * Divine
office,' a meaning perpetuated in the well-known phrase • Divine service.'
When Lanfranc made his vow in the forest, * sic vitam meam corrigere et insti-
tuere curabo ut tibi servire valeam et sciam,' he meant by • ut tibi servire sciam '
' that I may know how to say my office.' Thus in St. Anselm's Life we have
' matutinse et aliud servitium Dei,' and in the Miracles of St. Emmeram, * Cum
presbyter .... ad horam divini servitii veniens .... psalmodise in erviret.'
And opus Dei has a similar, though perhaps a less curtailed, meaning. Witness
the following passage : ' Videns abbas novum militem Christi revera Deum
quaerere, sollicitum esse ad opus Dei, ad obedientiam et ad alia quibus novitius
debet intentus esse, leetabatur corde, instruebatque eum in Domini servitio jugiter
accendens animum ejus ad virtutis amorera.' {Vita Ven. Bosonis Abb. Becc.)
Eadmer tells us of St. Wilfrid that when he was a boy * non ardor cestatis non
frigus hiemis (eum), ab instantia operis Dei detorquere valebant.' {Vita S. Wil-
fridi, § 28.) In each of these cases opus Dei means the Divine office. In the
following passage from the Life of St. Gerald of Aurillac, opus Dei seems to
be equivalent to missa. Seems to be, I say, for we must not be precipitate ; it
may really mean the office which followed mass. * Facto autem in castro
strepitu vociferantium milites qui ad missam .... aderant exsilire volebant.
Quos ille .... donee opus Dei completetur nequaquam exire permisit. '

Opus Dei, therefore, like servitiu?n Dei — unless, indeed, it may sometimes be
used for the mass, which I doubt— means the Divine office. See note on p. 85.

And now that we know the general sense of the ' sancta ut se invicem ad ot>us
Dei prsevenirent aemulatio ' of Gundulf and Anselm, I must draw the reader's
attention to the following passage from the Rule of St. Benedict. In the chapter
' Quomodo dormiant monachi ' are these words: 'facto signo absque mora
surgentes festinent invicem se pnevenire ad opus Dei.'' These are the very
words employed by Gundulfs biographer in the passage which engages our
attention ; they are my justification for rendering, as I have done, ' they curtailed
their sleep out of zeal to do the service of God.' That is to say, each tried
to forestall the other by jumping out of bed at the first stroke of the bell for
matins.

I believe Gundulfs biographer has employed the words of the Rule because the
two friends slept in adjoining beds ; for the chapter just quoted also provides as
follows : ' Surgentes vero ad opus Dei invicem se moderate exhortentur, ' the first
to rise tapping at the beds of the rest, as Turrecremata explains. I have no doubt
whatever that each of the two friends kept an account of the number of times he
had had the pleasure of awaking the other.

128 A GLIMPSE OF THE CLOISTER.

the better versed in Scripture, spoke more than Gundulf, who,
being the proner to tears, was drenched with profuser showers
of emotion. The one spoke, the other wept; the one planted,
the other watered ; the one brought forth treasures of divinest
speech, the other heaved sighs of deepest feehng ; the one
played the part of Christ, the other that of Mary.'

Alas, that not a vestige should remain of a home hallowed
by that saintly converse ! It paid in due course of time the
penalty of its too fragile structure, and the church itself,
religiously preserved for four centuries, fell at last before the
fury of our own countrymen in the reign of Henry V. But
imagination easily beholds the little grassy quadrangle, and
round it the lowly cloister of flint and timber, covered by a
shallow roof of thatch and lighted by a range of little windows
of semitransparent glass. The various rooms and offices on
the ground floor open into the cloister. Close to the refec-
tory is the lavatory,' supplied by a duct of water from the
neighbouring rill ; we know it by the long towel hanging
close to the door, and by another accessory of all monasteries
— I mean a whetstone, suspended from a joist in the roof
by a chain of iron. For each monk carried his knife at his
girdle, and from time to time he must sharpen it. The whole
of the arrangements are simple and homely to the last degree.
But everything, even to the whetstone, supplies the two
friends with illustrative material in aid of their conversa-
tion. 'Anselm would sometimes say to Gundulf, "Do you

' 'Appensum antem ante lavatorium esse debet manutergium, . . . debes
autem habere cotem juxta lavatorium ad quam exacues cum opus fuerit cultellum
tuum. . . . Cultellum tuum est ingenium tuum, . . . exercitium adhibe
ingenio et cotem adhibe cultello. . . . Pendere autem debet cos ex alto quia
nisi exercitium de sublimi aeternum intentione pendeat, cultellus ingenii ad scin-
dendum panem factus scripturae non proeparat sed potius habetat. Catena ferrea
quae cotem ligat,'&c. . . . — From a curious little tract, De Claustro Anivtce, in
the Vatican Library ; by whom composed I cannot say.

Anselm no doubt borrowed the metaphor of the whetstone from Horace's

' fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.'

M./'. 304.)

'CJSLESTIS PATRIAE 129

wish always to sharpen your blade at my whetstone, and will
you never let me sharpen my blade at yours ? Come, come,
say something wherewithal I too may profit. In good truth
I am only too like a whetstone, blunt and dull from my many
sins ; I have no edge at all, whereas you set your heart and
your desires so ardently upon the love of our heavenly hotne
{ad amorem ccelestis patrice) — what a sweet phrase is this
ccelestis p atria ; common as a field flower in spring, we meet it
on every page ; peculiar to no clime, it is the accepted formula,
the plaintive diilce domum, of all St. Benedict's children — you
set your desires so ardently on the love of our heavenly home
that from always musing on God your edge is always sharp."
Then the other said what good things he could. So were
both their hearts set on fire ; so were both of them refreshed
with the sweetness of heavenly longing. Such was the inter-
course of the two men ; ' such was their life in the cloister of
Le Bee.

A strange glimpse, our only glimpse, of the hidden life of
Anselm !

VOT» T. K

I30

CHAPTER IV.

PRIOR ANSELM'S labours.

Herlwin's biographer informs us that the good abbot
could be very severe upon indolent, idle, and slothful monks,
and would ask, * What is the use of a man who can neither
read nor keep the commandments of God?* But his face
would lighten up with an expression of more than paternal
fondness when he observed that some member of his com-
munity was especially punctilious in the performance of the
Divine service, especially devoted to literary pursuits, or es-
pecially painstaking in the cultivation of a virtue. * To such
an one he was not a superior, but a servant.' Not a few of
Herlwin's monks were urged to habits of study, more from a
desire of pleasing him than from a love of knowledge ; and
he made it his business to learn who 'amongst Lanfranc's
auditors in the schola claustralis had the best cultivated mind
and the most tenacious memory. ... If any lettered man
came to him wishing to enter the order, there is no describing
the joy with which he welcomed, or the kindness and con-
sideration with which he afterwards treated him.'

Anselm, therefore, was a marked man ; and Lanfranc was
not likely to leave the abbot long in ignorance of his genius,
his attainments, and his piety.

In truth, Anselm had committed a blunder in chosing Le
Bee for his home. He chose Le Bee, hoping there to slip the
more easily into the shade; but in choosing Le Bee he
cemented his friendship with the one man in Christendom
who could best appreciate him, and than whom no man living

THE OFFICE OF PRIOR. 131

could be more firmly resolved that his light should not be
hidden under a bushel.

Hence it was that he had not worn the habit for three years
when his destiny overtook him, and overtook him by the very
avenue which he fondly thought most effectually blocked
against it; for in 1062 Lanfranc was appointed Abbot of
St. Stephen's at Caen, whither he removed, taking with him
Gundulf as his prior and leaving his vacant stall to Anselm.

In the early days of monasticism the difference in dignity
and rank between an abbot and his prceposittis, or provost, had
proved too slight for the maintenance of that unity which is the
first condition of domestic happiness. St. Benedict proposed,
as a remedy, to suppress the office of provost, and establish
deaneries in its place — one dean to every ten monks in a com-
munity— but at the same time permitted the appointment of
a provost in extraordinary cases, provided only that that officer
should be nominated by the abbot, the monks having no more
than a consenting voice in the business ; and that the abbot
himself, not the bishop, should give him the dignity and be free
to depose him for misconduct. Long, however, before the
eleventh century experience had ascertained the impractic-
ability of the decanal system, had changed the W\\^prcepo situs
to prior, and had established numerous safeguards in addi-
tion to St. Benedict's for the assertion and protection of
the abbot's supremacy. At Cluny, whose customs in this
particular were followed with a general fidelity by the most
considerablemonasteriesof the West, the prior was the abbot's
deputy or vicegerent in all that concerned the interior police
of the house ; not less, but not more. He held the place of
honour in the sinister chortts, as the abbot did in the dexter
chorus ; but, unlike the abbot, had neither chalice nor
ornamenta of his own, and was not permitted to occupy the
abbot's stall when the latter happened to be absent from the
monastery, although on such occasions it was his business to
preside both in the chapter- house and in the refectory. When-

132 PRIOR A NS ELM'S EARLY TROUBLES.

ever he set forth to perform official duties at a distance, as on
visits of inspection to dependent houses or obedienticBy he was
accompanied by two brethren at the least, and a serving man
who had charge of the baggage assigned to him ; but none of
the baggage was his own, such was the Cluniac horror of
proprietas. The customs of Le Bee, however, exhibited an
interesting variation from those of Cluny, for Lanfranc had a
chalice which he left behind him as a legacy, or at least a loan,
to his successor, as he bequeathed to him certain marks of
honour which seem to have been denied to the prior of the
great Burgundian monastery. Thus at vespers and matins
Anselm as well as the abbot was incensed by the officiating
priest, and when he appeared in the cloister all rose and
remained standing until he had taken his place ; nor would
anything seem to have been omitted which could show that
the dignity hitherto held by Lanfranc and now conferred on
Anselm was, if second, yet only second to that adorned by
Herlwin.

But the earlier days of Anselm's priorate were not with-
out trouble. There were some who questioned the fitness
of the appointment ; not that any deemed him morally in-
competent, for all admired his virtues ; or thought him too
young, for it was no rare thing to raise still younger men
than Anselm to the abbatial chair itself. The grievance was,
not that he was young, but that he had been only two full
years in religion ; whereas the next senior man in residence
had already worn the habit for ten years at the very least.'
* They saw, and seeing grew jealous, that one who, as a
recent convert, should, in their opinion, have been kept below
them, was now set above them. Troubled in themselves, they
troubled others, offended consciences, sowed dissension, fos-
tered party spirit, and fomented dislikes. But with them

• Only such of my readers as may care to study the Nomina Monachoi-um Becc
in the Appendix can form any just idea of the light it sheds on what I have been
able to glean of Anselm's life at Le Bee.

PRAYER AND MEDITATION. 133

that hated peace Anselm was peaceable, and in return for
their detraction paid back offices of brotherly love, choosing
rather to overcome evil by good than to be overcome by evil ;
and, by the mercy of God, he succeeded so well that they,
remarking the purity and singleness of purpose with which
he persevered in all his doings, and noting that there was not
a trace in him of anything that could justly be blamed, were
turned from ill will to good, and at last began, to envy in-
deed, but to envy with a holy jealousy all that he said and
all that he did.' Eadmer, as might be expected, gives us no
particulars of this little transitory scandal, for the name of
Osbern, whom he introduces in connection with it, if it be
the name of a rival, is the name of a rival without followers.
Poor Osbern — a mere boy of some fifteen years, he was his
own leader and his own clique ; for three years he had savagely
gloated over the thought that he had right of precedence over
two such model monks as Gundulf and Anselm, and he now
as savagely made it his business to persecute the new prior.
But Osbern's story must be told elsewhere ; and since we
know nothing about the other malcontent or malcontents, we
may pass on at once to more agreeable topics.^

Now that Anselm's time was in great degree at his own
disposal, he could prosecute with greater freedom than hereto-
fore his more cherished employments. One of these was
prayer ; either the prayer in which the soul addresses herself
to God and the celestial hierarchies, or that in which, contem-
plating the mysteries of the faith, she seizes and records the
images presented to her gaze ; in correcter phrase, either
prayer or meditation. The homage is one, the forms are
distinct. But Anselm passed from one to the other with a

1 * Quidam fratres ipsius coenobii facti sunt semuli ejus. ' My knowledge of
Eadmer's style obliges me to say that these quidam fratres need not have been
more than two in number ; and, but for the context, I should say that there may
have been only one of them. I beg the reader to make note of this instance, for
we shall meet with others, some of them of considerable importance, in the course
of the narrative,

134 SACRED STUDY,

facility, and indulged in both with a fervour, which leave it
hard to determine whether of the two he preferred. ^

But he had another favourite employment, an employ-
ment with which his name will ever be associated ; I mean
the consecration of the speculative intellect to the quest of
Divine truth. Owning in reason as in faith a gift from God,
he was assured that the legitimate researches of the one can
never be in conflict with the divinely authorised convictions
of the other ; and made it his task, not indeed to give a
rational analysis of Christian doctrine — for his method was
not analytical — but laboriously and fearlessly to follow up the
deductions of reason, as knowing that their ultimate conclu-
sion would be in perfect harmony with revealed dogma.

' Thus did he wing a flight so lofty as that he reached and
unlocked the cabinet of problems which until his day had lain
unresolved, problems about the Divine Being and the subject-
matter of Christian faith, and penetrated and disentangled
them, and by trains of luminous reasoning made good both
the intellectual and the theological soundness of his method.
Such was his faith in the Holy Scriptures that nothing could
shake his heartfelt belief that there is nothing in them that
lies ever so little wide of the pathway of solid truth. Inspired
with this conviction, he directed all the eflbrts of his soul to
one end, that up to the measure of his faith he might be
privileged to penetrate by the eye of reason such things in
Holy Scripture as he found lying involved in much obscurity
here and there upon its page.'

Such is Eadmer's account, and it agrees with the account
given by the philosopher himself in the * Proslogion.' * I do
not try to sound Thy depths, O Lord, for I cannot match my
understanding to such an effort ; but I long to understand in

• Hence in one of his letters he speaks of his mediiandi sive orandi opportuni-
tates ; in another he refers to orationes sive niediiationes^ which he had composed ;
and in a third he characterises one of his devotional compositions as not so much
a prayer as a meditation.

r

ANSELM'S PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD. 135

some degree Thy truth, the truth which my heart believes
and loves. I do not seek to understand as the condition of
believing, but I believe as the condition of understanding.
For this is my belief, that if I believe not neither shall I
understand.' ^

And in another place he says, speaking in the person of a
disciple —

* As on the one hand right order requires that we believe
the deep things of the Christian religion before presuming to
subject them to the analysis and test of reason, so on the
other hand it looks to me like an indolent neglect if, already
established in the faith, we do not take the trouble to gain an
intellectual intimacy with what we believe.' ^

* Hence it was,' continues Eadmer, ' that, illuminated by
the searching light of an inner wisdom and guided by a dis-
criminating reason, he could analyse characters of every age
and sex with such an accuracy that when he came to speak
you perceived that he had lifted a curtain and was showing
each one his own heart.* And his biographer goes on to say
that he was peculiarly happy in tracing the mixed and
tangled upgrowth of those moral habits which constitute the
difference between man and man to their ultimate source and
root ; that he penetrated nothing which he did not illumine ;
that whatever he said carried with it the authority of an in-
spiration, as though the words he spake were not his own, but
Another's ; and concludes his account by saying that if a
prophet's lips had in olden time been inspired by the live coal
from the altar, we surely need not wonder that the tongue
which was once in childish vision blessed by the Food of
heaven should thus have distilled lessons of Divine wisdom.

I need not say, however, that the industry which he ex-
pended upon his monks in that little half-lighted cloister
down in the damp valley of Le Bee was not solely occupied

' Proslogion, cap. i. 2 Ctir Deus Homo^ lib. i. cap. ii.

136 ANS ELM'S PHILOSOPHICAL TEXT-BOOKS,

in spiritual direction, and that the discipline of the intellect was,
in his judgment, if of secondary, yet only of secondary, im-
portance to the discipline of the heart. It would perhaps be
impossible to ascertain the extent of his acquaintance with
the works of Plato ; but, whatever the field it embraced, there
cannot be a question as to its depth and accuracy. And if
the form of some of his philosophical treatises may be a guide
to us, we shall have to own that he followed Plato's great
master by adopting an interlocutory method of instruction.
We have several specimens of his application of dialectic to
theological inquiries ; but of his lessons in dialectic itself, or
the art of analysing and classifying ideas, he has only left us
one example. Nevertheless this little treatise, 'De Gram-
matico,' proves that the walls of Le Bee often heard the name
of Aristotle, and affords us a more than favourable notion of
the power, versatility, and subtilty of the analytical method
which Anselm had borrowed from the Stagyrite. A detailed
account of this, or of the * De Veritate,' the * De Libertate
Arbitrii,' and the ' De Casu Diaboli ' would be out of place in
these pages ; but no one who takes the trouble to read them
with the attention they require and deserve can be surprised to
learn that the monks of Le Bee who had profited by Anselm's
teaching came to be renowned through Christendom * for
their zeal and skill in the investigation and solution of sacred
enigmas,* and were so fond of these studies that the name of
Beccensis ccenobita was almost a synonym for philosopher.
Perhaps the second of the three treatises just named is the
happiest of the group ; and if the reader who is beguiled into
opening its pages find it necessary to peruse them more than
once before he masters the argument, he will derive solace
from the fact that even St. Anselm's auditors were in like
case. * Do not be surprised,* says the disciple, * if things
upon which I have not been in the habit of pondering are not
always all of them together in the field of my mind's vision
when I have only heard you propound them once.' His defi-

THE 'DE LIBERTATE ARBITRW 13

nition of free-will is ' the power of preserving rectitude of will
for its own sake ; ' and the following short account of it may
not prove uninteresting : —

^Master-. It remains now for you to tell me if you
have any exception to take to our definition of free-will.
Disciple : There is one thing which raises some little diffi-
culty in my mind. We often have the power of possessing
a thing, and yet that power is not a free power ; it may, that
is to say, be hampered by influence from without. When,
therefore, you say that free-will is the power of preserving
the rectitude of the will for that rectitude's sake, should we
not add that the power is a free power and superior to
external influence.? Master-. If the power of preserving
the rectitude of the will for that rectitude's sake were some-
times to be found without the freedom which we have seen
to be proper to it, it would be well to make the addition
you suggest ; but since the definition we have framed is in
such wise a perfect one as that it includes neither less nor
more than the freedom of which we are in quest, we may
satisfy ourselves that there is nothing to add to it and
nothing to take away. For power is a kind, form, or mode
of freedom. It is 2, power \S\^x\.. And we say further that
it is a power of preserving, to separate it from all power
that is not a preserving power, as that of laughing or
walking. We say, further, that it is a power of preserving
rectitude, so as to exclude the power of preserving gold,
or whatever is not rectitude. We then add the word will,
to distinguish it from the power of preserving the rectitude
of other things, as the rectitude of a rod ^ or of an opinion.
And when we limit our definition by subjoining the words
for that rectitude's own sake, we distinguish free-will from
the power of preserving the rectitude of the will for the

' In allusion to a passage in the preceding treatise, the De Veritate, in which
he limits the application of the word rectitudo as the synonym of Veritas,

138 ANSELM'S INDUSTRY,

sake of any other thing, as when it is preserved for the
sake of money or in obedience to a physical law. A dog
preserves rectitude of will in obedience to a physical law
when it loves its young or a kind master. Since, then,
there is nothing in our definition which is not necessary for
outlining the freedom of will of a rational and voluntary
being, and for bounding out all others, the freedom with
which we are concerned is included within its terms, and
all other is excluded. Does it seem so to you } Disciple :
It seems to me to be an exact definition.'

But enough of this ; unless, indeed, we venture to reflect
that his acquaintance with Greek philosophy was the Egyptian
treasure which he is described as bringing with him from
Aosta to Le Bee. He had owed its possession indirectly
to Lanfranc, no doubt, and to Lanfranc's intercourse with the
East through the merchant vessels which came thence across
the Adriatic, and up the Po and the Ticino to Pavia ; and to
Lanfranc was he indebted for its subsequent assortment and
valuation. These pagan spoils were woven by Anselm into
that philosophical theology which it is his peculiar glory to
have been the first to throw, as adornment at once and as
protection, around the sacred ark of Christian dogma.

Anselm's days were so ruthlessly consumed by these
labours in behalf of his monks — to say nothing of the claims
made upon him by applicants, whether religious or secular,
from without the precinct of Le Bee — that a few precarious
minutes were often all that was left him of leisure for his
own proper employments. He, therefore, was wont to filch
for meditation, study, and prayer hours which, by the rule
of the order, were devoted to sleep. Rarely, if ever, did
he retire to rest with the community after compline ; rarely,
if ever, did he allow himself more than a brief interval of
oblivion before the bell for matins warned him that midnight
had come.

ANSELM'S CRITICAL ACUMEN. 139

Nor was this all. The critical acumen in which he had
proved himself the rival of Lanfranc was not allowed to lose
its edge by want of practice ; and another employment was
ever open to him in the interminable toil and labor unprobus
of correcting manuscripts, which had hitherto been much cor-
rupted by the indolence of transcribers, or by successive but
injudicious efforts to repair blanks created by the slow corro-
sion of the parchment through lapse of time. Many were the
nights in which he thus laboured on, peering over crabbed
texts, moving his capricious, ineffectual candle from one codex
to another, comparing and collating their differences, and
digesting their conflicting evidence ; at one time tracing back
the history of a corruption until there could be no question
as to the original reading, at another pondering over some
intricate and knotty fault in hope of the moment when his
genius should inspire him with the only possible method of
unravelling it.

But other work awaits him. Some one, whose soul is
bound to his own by the sacredest of sympathies, has implored
him to compose a meditation, or a prayer, or something in
part prayer and in part meditation, which he may treasure
and carry about him and refer to from time to time when he
finds that his love of heaven is growing cold ; something
wherewith to rekindle his longings for the ccslestis patria.
He therefore lays aside the wearisome parchments, and, taking
out his tablets of wax, and a style which use has polished to
a silvery brightness, trims the smoky candle, whose feeble ray,
though it scarce reach wall or ceiling, fully illuminates his
pale eager face and sensitive lips, and then engraves the
opening sentences of that wonderful Terret me vita inea^

^ * Deinde : Terret me vita mea ; navique diligenter disctissa, cum eo quod
sequitur ; scriptum hoc et prseter hoc alia piissima de contrite spiritu tuo et de
pietate contriti tui cordis edita et scripta, pias prrestant nobis lacrymas tuas legere,
nostras edere ; ita ut utrumque miremur, et in corde tuo redundare tantoe rorem
benedictionis et sine susurro descendere inde rivum in cordibus nostris.' — Ei>.
i. 61.

I40 THE 'ORATIONES MEDITATIVE:

concerning which the monks of Chaise-Dieu made bold to
say that they fancied they could read the writer's tears upon
the parchment of their copy, and declared that they knew
not which was the more marvellous, the dew of benediction
with which Anselm's heart was drenched, or the subtilty with
which the thrill of sympathetic emotion passed from his soul
to theirs.

Another of his most remarkable pieces is an oratio medi-
tativa, written in the person of one who, having sadly fallen,
cries out in grief and terror at the view of his sin, regrets an
innocence gone for ever, complains no less of his irreparable
loss in the past than of the intolerable torments which await
him in the future, and, in an ecstasy of woe, flies to the brink
of hell, there, from the punishment of sin, to learn its guilt
and to gain a motive for challenging the mercy of his offended
God.* It exhibits in a singular if awful manner the sympathy
and sensibility which constituted the secret of St. Anselm's
extraordinary influence ; for it fascinates, not by its fervour,
its poetry, or the skill expended in its composition, but simply
by its reality. As the reader reads on he finds it hard not to
think himself the penitent, and well he may ; for the writer
writes as though the case were his own. And when one has
read it one wonders what the hour must have been when it
was tremulously committed to the tablets ; an hour of tears
and more than tears, an hour of overwrought nerve and
throbbing brain, an hour of ecstatic horror, when the very
birds of night were hushed lest they should recall the writer
from his vision.

* Let my mind go down, down to the region of dark-
ness, the region covered with the shadow of death ; and let
her scan the torments that there await my guilty soul ; let
her gaze on them, and study them ; let her see, and be sore

* It is the third in Gerberon's edition, Its proper title is Deploratip mak
amissce virginitatis.

THE ' DEPLORATiO: 141

troubled. What is it, O God, what is it that I descry in
the land of misery and gloom ? Horror ! horror ! What is
it I behold there, where no order, but everlasting horror
dwells ? Ah, the jarring shrieks, the tears and hurly-burly,
the gnashing of teeth, the disordered advance of multitu-
dinous wailings, wo, and wo. How many wo's ! how many
and how many wo's, and wo's on the heels of wo's ! Ah,
the sulphurous fire, the flame from the nethermost deep !
And you, ye volumes of blackest smoke, with what frightful
roaring do I see you wreathe and roll ! You worms, alive
in fire, what strange appetite for gnawing thus inflames
you, you that the fire of fires does not burn ! And you,
ye demons, glowing through and through, chafing with
rage, gnashing your teeth with frenzy, why so merciless to
them that are writhing in the midst of you t O all and
every kind of torments, measured by justice, but measure-
less to power of endurance, is it so that no controlment, no
respite, no end is ever to subdue you } Are these the
things, great God, that have been prepared for fornicators
and despisers of Thee, of whom I am one } I, yes I ; I am
one of them.'

But let us read on : —

*■ Shudder, O my soul ; and faint, my mind ; and break,
my heart. Whither do you drag me, O punishers of my
guilt } Whither dost thou thrust me, O my sin } Whither
dost thou drive me, O my God > If I have contrived to be
Thy culprit, say, could I have contrived not to be Thy
creature } If I have robbed me of my chastity, say, have I
bereft Thee of Thy mercy t O Lord, O Lord, if I have let
that come whence Thou canst damn, hast Thou let that
go whence Thou art wont to save } Do not, O Lord, so
look upon my evil as to forget Thy good. Where, O God
of Truth, where is Thine " I desire not the death of the
sinner, but that the sinner turn from his way and live " ?

142 ANSELM WISHES TO RESIGN THE PRIORATE.

O Lord, who Hest not, what means Thy nolo mortem pec-
catoris, if Thou bury down in hell a sinner crying unto
Thee ? To plunge a sinner into the bottomless pit, is this
Thy volo ut convertatur^ Thy volo tit vivat ? . . J

In course of time these incessant labours in numberless
interests told upon a constitution far from robust ; both mind
and body were fatigued ; he regretted the lost calm ot earlier
days, and resorted to his Archbishop. He entered Maurille's
presence with no further intention than that of seeking advice ;
but whilst he set forth his case the prelate's sympathy and
his own weakness forced an unwilling tear to his eyes ; the
sketch which he had begun to draw of his present distracted
life enlarged and exaggerated itself into the picture of some
irreparable disaster ; sobs broke the continuity of what had
been designed as the coldest and clearest of statements, and
the poor, prior, losing all control of himself, divulged the secret
of his heart as he had never meant to do, abandoned state-
ments for entreaties, and in an agony of emotion implored
the Archbishop to relieve him of a burden which he protested
was unbearable. Maurille was more than a builder of cathe-
drals, or Anselm would not have unbosomed himself so
soon and so passionately. 'My dearest child,' replied the
prelate, ' do not ask this of me, do not ask it. Do not wish
to lay down your burden and care only for self. I assure you
I have heard of many, and known many, who, for their own
quiet's sake, have declined to undertake the pastoral care and
watch their brethren for their good. I have known them
saunter along in sloth, get into a bad way, and at last hurry
on from bad to worse than bad. This must never be the case
with you (God forbid it) ; and, therefore, by your holy obedi-
ence I require you to keep your present preferment, and never
under any pretence, or for any reason whatever, relinquish it,
except at the bidding of your abbot ; and, furthermore, on no
account to refuse a higher one, should you ever be called to

ANSELM'S FATE IS SEALED. 143

it. For I am sure that you will not remain very long where
you are ; you will soon be promoted to a higher charge.'
' Ah, poor me,' cried the sobbing and distracted prior, ' I am
not strong enough for what I carry now, and if a heavier load
is laid upon me I dare not shake it off.' But all to no pur-
pose ; the Archbishop repeated the injunction, and under pain
of sin forbad him to transgress it.
His fate was sealed.

144

CHAPTER V.

PRIOR ANSELM'S INFLUENCE.

When the Prior of Le Bee went to Rouen on the worse than
bootless errand just recorded, he was accompanied, it appears,
by a secular clergyman named Albert, whom he had for
some time known and loved, but whom, by reason of some
confidence revealed during their ride through the forest, he
was henceforth to regard with still greater interest than hereto-
fore.^ Albert the physician was certainly not an Englishman,
nor, in all likelihood, a Norman, but probably a Lombard,
whom Lanfranc, with his fatal talent for attracting all that
was most excellent, had induced to forsake the medical school
of Bologna and live close to Herlwin's monastery, thus com-
pleting its encyclopaedic renown. It was a pleasant distraction
for Anselm to have such a companion on such a journey ; for
the growing interest which the one felt for the other, as each
unbosomed all that was nearest to his own heart, did much to
soothe the Prior's spirits and recruit his overtasked energies.
But Albert did not return to Le Bee with him ; for he was
on his way to Caen, where he was henceforth to reside in the
neighbourhood of St. Stephen's Abbey.

Anselm's journey back to Le Bee, therefore, must have
been a weary one. With the disheartening prospect of a life
burdened with its own proper responsibilities there blended
the nearer view of a growing community deprived of the
services of an accomplished physician. The fault was Lan-
franc's ; but Lanfranc may have thought that the healing art at

> Ep. i. 28, 36.

ANSELM'S MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE. i4s

Le Bee would suffer little by the substitution of the Prior for
Dom Albert ; ^ and so many of the great ecclesiastics of the
time studied medicine that some skill in diagnosis and in the
exhibition of drugs must surely have been expected from men
in a position like Anselm's. Great prelates like Fulbert of
Chartres and Lanfranc of Canterbury have left behind them
letters which evince not only a knowledge more than em-
pirical, and an anxious care that their remedies should be
properly applied, but that which must best recommend both
the knowledge and the care — sympathy, vigilance, and thought-
fulness, all engaged in the alleviation of human suffering.
Baldwin, Abbot of St. Edmund's, and at Fecamp Johanellinus,
or * Little John ' — thus named by men who wondered that so
diminutive a frame should enshrine so many and such various
gifts as his ; Guntard of Jumieges ; Gilbert Maminot, Bishop
of Lisieux — were all of them medici ; and the Prior of Le Bee
can scarcely, since his promotion to the priorate, have either
escaped or evaded the obligation of studying a science so
noble in itself and so benign in its aim.

But Eadmer, who in writing the * Vita ' wrote as a hagio-
logist, has not deigned to recommend the medical skill of
St. Anselm by any instances of its successful exercise. The
little that he tells us, and the little that can be gathered from
Anselm's correspondence, show that the good Prior was a
careful observer of symptoms, and a painstaking student of
the works of Galen and Hippocrates.^ But it would seem
that whatever technical skill he may have displayed elicited
from his patients even less admiration and less gratitude than

' What may really have constituted a good physician I will not undertake to
say. ' Eodem tempore Rodulfus cognomento Mala Corona Uticum venit. . . .
Hie . . . Gallice Italiaeque scrutando scholas secretarum indaginem rerum insig-
niter attigit. . . . Physicse quoque scientiam tam copiose habuit ut in urbe
Psalernitana, ubi maximae medicorum scholse ab antiquo tempore habentur,
neminem in medicinali urbe, prceter qtiandam sapientem tnatraitam, sibi parem
invenitet.' — Ordeni, ii. 70. This sapiens matrona, by the way, suggests the sage'
fanme of the French.

- See especially Epp, i. 31, 51.

VOI>. T. L

146 DOM HEREWALD,

those moral gifts which he brought to bear upon the mitigation
of physical suffering. * He spent much of his time in the
infirmary, and used to investigate most carefully the symptoms
of each one of his patients. Whatever each one's case required
he promptly, ungrudgingly, and cheerfully administered. He
was a father to the whole and a mother to the sick ; nay,
father and mother in one both to the sick and the whole. No
one had a secret in his heart that he did not wish to confide
to Anselm, as a child entrusts its confidence to the keeping of
a tender mother.'

His characteristic sensibility was never at fault, so inven-
tive was it of palliatives for both the moral and the physical
distresses of his patients. ' Oh,' cries Eadmer, * how many
already given up for lost in their sickness were by his sym-
pathy and watchful care restored to their former health ! '
Here is an instance : Herewald was broken with age and
sickness ; age and sickness between them had drained the
vigour from all his limbs, and paralysed every organ except
the tongue. But Anselm was ever at his side, minutely
feeding him with the juice of grapes squeezed, berry by berry,
from one hand into the other, and thence distilled into the
sufferer's mouth. It was the only food the old man could
take, and, as he explained on his recovery, he could only take
it from Anselm's hand.^

Among the senior members of the community there was
one who had never ceased to resent the foreigner's promotion
to the priorate. He fell ill, and in his hour of weakness
brooded over the injury that had embittered his later years,
until one day, when the house was plunged in silence — for,
except the attendants in the infirmary and Anselm, who was
in the cloister correcting manuscripts, the community were

' To what precise date this incident is to be assigned I cannot say. Eadmer
does not always observe the chronological order, nor need we expect that he
should ; for it is improbable that as he wrote he had a Nomijia Monachorum
Beccensium to guide him, as I have. Herewald was prolessed in 1072 or 1073 ;
but he may, of course, have had a very long novitiate.

'BE ATI MANSUETI. 147

taking their midday siesta — he became suddenly delirious.
Anselm was summoned, and after a short delay repaired to
the room where the sufferer lay, and as he went in made
the sign of the cross, invoking the Holy Trinity. The sick
man was instantly tranquillised, and owned his deliverer in
Anselm, who now seated himself at his side and spoke to
him as only saints can speak, and by the unconscious force of
sheer Christian meekness constrained him to pour into his
ear all the sins and sorrows of a long and chequered life, and
then composed him to meet his end. And why not ? The
charity of Christ had won its victory. Why should the poor
man linger } As the community were rising from their repose
to go to nones they were startled by a sharp quick sound from
a wooden rattle. They knew what it meant, hurried to the
infirmary, and, crowding in, found Anselm's old inveterate foe
expiring, forgiving and forgiven, in the arms of Anselm.

If the Abbey of Le Bee was now old enough to see men
who had entered it in their prime drop off as leaves drop in
autumn, the institution had gained sufficient renown to
number among its members the children of people of rank,
who discerned in it the best home and best refuge for their
offspring. Some of these nictriti were by this time emerging
into youth, and the story I am about to borrow from Eadmer
shows that, even before coming into directer relations with
the Prior — for boys under fifteen were kept apart from the
rest, and had a master of their own — they must have enjoyed
in large degree the benefit of his gentle administration.

Once a certain abbot, whose name and preferment need
not be given, but who was accounted quite a monk, was
talking aloud to himself about matters that concerned the
monastic profession, and, amongst a number of other subjects,
found something to say about his monachi nutiHti. * What
will become of them V he exclaimed, addressing, but scarcely
addressing, the Prior in his querulous monody. ' They are
perverse and they are incorrigible ; we flog them night and

148 THE OLD BARBARISM,

day incessantly, and they are always worse for the flogging
than they were before.' The Prior, with an air of surprise,
rejoined^ ' You flog them incessantly ! And when they out-
grow their boyhood what sort of lads are they ? ' * Stupid
brutes/

'You have not very good luck in the training of your
nutritiy suggested Anselm ; * you found them human, and
you nourish them into brutes!' 'What can we do, then?'
was now the abbot's challenge. 'What can we do.? We
brace them in all sorts of ways that they may get on, and we
end by not getting on ourselves.' ' You brace them !' rejoined
the Prior ; and, after a pause, ' Tell me, my lord Abbot, I
pray you, were you to plant a young tree in your garden, and
so hem it in betimes on every side as to prevent its stretching
forth its branches, and were you, after some years, to remove
the impediments you had set about it, what sort of tree would
it then grow into } ' ' Useless timber, of course, with gnarled
and crooked branches.' 'And, of course, no one would be
to blame but you, who had gone to such extremes with your
restraints upon it. Surely this is what you are doing with
your boys. They have been planted in the garden of the
Church, by their parents' oblation of them, to grow and bear
fruit for God ; but you carry the system of terror, threats,
and whippings to such a pass that you cramp them and leave
them no chance of expanding and developing ; and the con-
sequence of all this indiscriminating repression is that they
contract such a base and — what shall I say i* — such a crooked
moral habit as reminds one of the tangled branches of a
thorn tree ; they foster and indulge it, and not only indulge,
but grow obstinate in it ; so that whatever is afterwards
done for setting them straight they purposely shun. And
so, thinking that you have no such thing in your hearts as
love, sympathy, kindness, gentleness for them, they at last
cease to believe that any such virtues can possibly exist in
you, and fancy that all you do comes of hatred and spite

CHRISTIAN REGENERATION. 149

against them. The consequence is very sad. As they grow
in years hatred and a suspicion of all kinds of mischief grows
with them, and they become inevitably biassed to what is
evil ; for having been trained in nothing like genuine charity,
they can look at nothing you do for them without a scowl
and a sidelong glance.

*■ But do, for the love of God, let me know why it is that
you are so set against them t Are they not human ? Are
they not of the same nature with yourself } Would you like
to be served as you serve them } ' Here the moody abbot
no doubt muttered something, part of which reached the
Prior, who, perhaps, had not the acutest of hearing. * If you
were what they are ! Be it so. Do you expect to form them
to goodness by nothing but blows and rods t Did you ever
know a goldsmith form a beautiful intaglio out of a plate of
gold or silver by nothing but blows ? I think not. Why,
what } To work out his design upon the plate of metal he
now gently presses and strikes it with his tool, now still more
gently, and very, very carefully raises it and works it into
form. So with you. If you desire your boys to be lovely
characters, you must, together with the depressing discipline
of the rod, administer to them the support and succour of
gentleness and fatherly kindness.' 'What support .-^ What
succour } ' demanded the discontented and somewhat defiant
interlocutor. 'Our task is to brace them to solidity and
ripeness of character.' ' Quite so,' said the Prior, ' quite so.
Bread and other solid food are useful and nutritious for
children that are strong enough to bear them ; but give them
to an unweaned babe instead of its proper nourishment, and
you will find that, instead of feeding, you choke. And why ?
No need to tell ; the reason is clear. Be sure that just as the
human body, in its weakness and in its vigour, has its proper
food suited to its state, so the soul of man, in its time of
weakness and in its vigour, has its own appropriate nurture.
The vigorous soul is refreshed and nourished by solid food,

ISO 'YOU WILL WIA THEM ALL TO GOD,

such as patience in tribulations ; not coveting neighbours'
goods ; when one cheek has been struck, offering the other ;
praying for enemies ; loving those that hate, and such like.
But a soul frail as yet, and weak in the service of God,
requires milk ; for example, kindness from those about it,
benignity, sympathy, a cheerful mode of address, a loving
tolerance, and much more of the same kind. If you adapt
yourself thus to your weak and to your strong, by the grace
of God you will win them all to God.'

* You will win them all to God! These words broke the
poor abbot's heart, who exclaimed, with a groan, * Truly we
have erred from the truth, and the light of discernment has
not lighted on us ; ' and, falling on the ground at the Prior's
feet, confessed that he was wrong, begged pardon for the past,
and promised amendment in the future.

A word for Eadmer, who tells the story. His introduction
of the abbot, with a great reputation for religio, a sort of
typical monk, talking aloud to himself, and speechifying about
his little grievances, until he came to his naughty boys, when
the good, tender-hearted Prior took care to throw in a word
so as to open conversation ; the curt replies which he puts
into the poor man's mouth ; the muttered something, not
expressed in the text, but intended to be read between the
lines, in response to Anselm's appeal, * Would you like it ? '
the dogged adherence to the same unhappy word * brace,' and
the adroit change of meaning from 'we brace' in the rustic
and still extant sense of *we flog' to 'our business is to
brace' in the sense of ^our business is to invigorate;' the
advantage Anselm takes of the abbot's Equivoque and shifting
of position ; the good Prior's crushing conclusion, ' You will
win them all to God',' and the sudden contrition and melting
of the other's heart, who, every inch a monk, fell at his feet
begging pardon and promising amendment — all this is told
with a skill and a picturesque effect which the acknowledged
masters of biography have scarcely ever reached and as-
suredly never excelled.

LANFRANC A CIVILISER. 151

* I write this/ he adds, * that we may have an idea of the
Prior's kindly discrimination and discriminating kindness in
his treatment of others, no matter who.'

But to us the story is otherwise of value. Anselm's
kindness and Anselm's discretion had ample opportunity of
exercise, indeed, but they were exerted in the execution of
his great mission, which was to humanise, to civilise, to
christianise the untamed but not indomitable ferocity of his
Scandinavian neighbours. Thirty years ago Herlwin had
sought, but sought in vain, for some monastery in which that
ferocity should have been sufficiently subdued for him to have
some reasonable prospect of a peaceful lodging within its
walls, but finding it untamed, had been constrained to shrink
from contact with it. The gate porter who handled him so
roughly was a Christian, and a Christian who, as Herlwin
deemed, and no doubt rightly deemed, had voluntarily relin-
quished many a gross allurement in hope of gaining a happy
immortality ; and, just as we should be ashamed to rebuke a
child for thinking that angels in heaven eat sugar plums, so
Herlwin would have scorned to indulge uncharitable censure
of a porter who had not the slightest doubt that St. Peter at
the gate of heaven was in the habit of clutching intruders by
the hair with one hand, and dealing them a sound blow on
the nape of the neck with the other, by way of ejecting them.
The minds of the best men in Normandy were childish, and
their manners barbarous, even though their hearts were set
on heaven ; and Herlwin dared not condemn them, though
he felt obliged to abstain from their society. And the little
group who gathered round him first at Bonneville, and then
at Le Bee, even though they may not have been as rough as
some other religious, were yet so intolerant of salutary control "
that he almost despaired of taming them, unquestionable as
was the goodness of their intentions ; whilst Lanfranc, in his
turn, found them to be exceedingly disagreeable neighbours,
notwithstanding his expectation and his hope of meeting them
hereafter in a better and a gentler world.

152 ANSELM A CIVILISER.

Still, Lanfranc's priorate had been of invaluable service to
the house of his adoption, in compelling the respect and the
distant emulation of its inmates, and in drawing to its cloister
a few men of refined manners and cultivated intellect ; and
Anselm's priorate was to complete the work thus begun. It
was, as I have said, Anselm's mission to humanise, civilise,
and christianise whatever of the old barbarous element still
survived within the walls of his monastery. A noble mission,
indeed, but not an easy one. The good abbot who had been
so stupidly unmerciful in his treatment of his nutriti was soon
converted from his error, for, grievous as was his mistake, he
had been prompted to it neither by rivalry nor malice ; but
the handful of men who kept alive their jealousy of Anselm
were too deeply prejudiced to yield a ready submission to his
arts of gentle suasion. The prejudice is easy to understand.
If they had once been jealous of Lanfranc, because, unaware
of the estimate which Christendom had formed of him, they
knew no more about him than that he was refined as they
were not, high-souled as they were not, and a foreigner, they
no sooner learnt what sort of man he really was than their
admiration set him out of reach of their spite, and they were
proud to have him for prior. But Anselm had not made a
name in the world, and Anselm was a foreigner. The reason
they gave of their dislike was that he was their junior in
religious profession ; but that can scarcely have been their
chief as undoubtedly it was not their only grievance ; and it
is the habit of jealous people to give a false account of their
griefs. Some five or six years, it is true, had elapsed between
the profession of his immediate senior in religion and his own ;
but the very fact that his immediate senior was his most
• inveterate rival would in itself have sufficed to disarm their
discontent by exhibiting its absurdity. For that immediate
senior was, after all, the merest stripling ; and the contrast
which they noted between Anselm and Osbern was not merely
a contrast between thre^ years of religious profession and ten,

DOM OSBERN. 153

nor a contrast between monks by conversion and monks by
bringing up ; it was a contrast between refinement, gentleness,
elevation of character, and the as yet unexercised demon of
the old barbarism. Poor Osbern ! A Norman, and not im-
probably a son or nephew of WiUiam Fitzosbern, the kinsman
and counsellor of the lately crowned Conqueror, he in his
strangely mingled good and evil exhibited the conflicting
qualities of the Norman people, the Norman nobility, and the
princes of Normandy at this critical epoch. Possessed of a
singularly keen and accurate perception, and a remarkable
skill and ingenuity in the mechanical arts, he had moral gifts
which would have made him attractive at an engaging age,
but for a certain perversity which detected mischief with all
the accuracy of an instinct and did wrong with all the energy
of a passion. The keen-witted boy was not slow to detect the
resentment which Anselm's promotion had evoked, and, with
the assurance and audacity sometimes to be found in children
of an age and temperament like his, avowed himself a sharer
in the grievance of his elders. Such an ally may be of great
service to a group of malcontents, who watch his tricks with
more than an amused interest, and are gratified to perceive his
facility in seizing the proper part to play and his adroitness
in playing it. Osbern was admirably qualified for his task,
for to the intelligence of a dog in reading, as such young
gentlemen so well know how to do, the human face, he added
the rage of a dog that is set on worrying his victim. His
active mind delighted in the difficult and exciting enterprise of
worrying the placid Prior ; whilst the placid Prior, untroubled
indeed on his own account, but grieved at the contrast between
the moral and the intellectual qualities of his persecutor, was
quietly resolved upon reforming him. The community looked
on. Anselm began by coaxing the wild creature with little
acts of kindness ; by tolerating his pranks with a benignant
condescension ; by conceding in his favour such little in-
dulgences— and they were not a few — as could be granted

154 DOM OSBERN'S A TYPICAL INSTANCE.

without positive breach of discipline. The strange wolfish
creature, thus pleased and occupied, began by insensible de-
grees to lose much of his erst unmanageable ferocity, and,
giving faint tokens of a heart that, after all, beat generous and
true beneath that untamed exterior, slowly responded to his
tamer's caresses with a coy, uncouth respect, with submission
to his counsels, and with manners rudely formed upon a
civilised model. The Prior perceiving this and pursuing his
advantage, now admitted him to the interchanges of an inti-
mate and familiar friendship, tended and fostered his new
affections and his new virtues, and seized every opportunity of
improving, whether by instruction, encouragement, or advice,
what was so well begun.

After some considerable time, but very warily, he retrenched
one by one the concessions once yielded to his puerile age ;
for indulgences proper to a savage boyhood were unsuitable
to a youth who had at last consciously owned the charm of
the civiliser.

Years passed on ; and so well did the young man lay
Anselm's instructions to heart that the latter, assured of
ultimate success, at last made it his business to root up with
unsparing hand whatever of boyish folly might come to the
surface in Osbern's character. What was worthy of reproof
he now vigorously punished by verbal reprimand, and even
by that physical chastisement which the age deemed neces-
sary to the formation of character. The reclaimed, educated,
almost polished Osbern bore all these corrections with a quiet
patience ; for he was at last a monk in soul, in act, in will ;
and, inspired with a very passion for holiness, soon showed him-
self a model of Christian meekness. It was now his turn to
suffer as Anselm before him had done. The refining change
wrought in him provoked many a hard word from men who,
being too old themselves to undergo the Hke, were jealous of
it in him, and were unwilling to condone his apostasy from
their ranks. But they were soon subdued, for they soon

DOM OSBERN'S LAST ILLNESS. 155

owned that the reformation which nettled them was no super-
ficial change but a moral conversion, a transformation of the
spirit of the young man's mind to the ideal of a perfect
Christian humanity.^

Henceforth Osbern was more to Anselm than a favourite
disciple, an intimate companion, a bosom friend ; he was a
typical instance of that civilising, humanising, christianising
change which it was the mission of monasticism to effect in
the world. And henceforth Anselm could confidently hope
that in the humble cloister of Le Bee, its inmates now one at
heart and all engaged together in endeavouring to realise the
fulness of the stature of the Christian character, a peace would
soon reign that should make Le Bee like the more favoured
cloisters of the south, an earthly paradise. Hitherto it had
not been that.

Was it to ensure the issue of the conquest that Heaven
now so strangely interposed ? When Anselm in his old age
reached this part of the story, tears came to his eyes. His
young friend had already displayed a wealth of moral and
intellectual capacity and endowment such as even in Anselm's
estimate gave promise of a career rich in abundant service to
Christendom, when — so does a cruel frost nip our blossoms
and shed them to earth — some undescribed malady laid its
sudden hand on Osbern, and he took to a bed in the dormitory
from which he was never to rise again. The young man was
very happy in his illness, for Anselm had taught him the
secret of a content that rises victorious over every pain and
every regret, and was at his side day and night incessantly.
Whatever nourishment he took was administered by Anselm ;
whatever needful attentions were bestowed on his suffering
and emaciated frame were all bestowed by Anselm, who,
leaving nothing undone that the most provident care could
suggest, supported and consoled the patient both in his body's

* In this account I follow Eadmer's as closely as may be, short of a literal
translation.

iS6 DOM OS BERN'S PASSAGE HENCE.

and in his soul's necessities to the very end. As that end drew
near Anselm, loth to have such a friendship snapped so soon,
and yearning to trace the soul's passage, though an assured
one, yet through what storms he knew not, hence to the eternal
shore, bent over his dying friend and whispered an entreaty
that he would, if it were possible, let him know when he was
gone how it fared with him. ' He promised, and passed away.'

The body was washed, clothed, composed on the bier, and
carried into the church, the whole community preceding it and
singing the ' Subvenite, sancti Dei.' ^ When the usual rites had
been performed — it seems that he died about midnight, and
was carried into the church after matins — the monks all sat
round about the corpse, to watch it and sing psalms for the
departed soul incessantly, until it was time for the next office.

But the Prior wished to be alone, and withdrew to an un-
observed part of the church. There, as he prayed and wept,
his strength failed him from fatigue and grief, and he closed
his eyes, when lo ! beings of reverend aspect, and clothed in
the whitest of white garments, had entered the room where
Osbern died, and seated themselves in judgment round the
spot where, stretched on the sackcloth, he expired. But
their sentence was hidden from the dreamer, who tried in
vain to learn it. Presently the scene changed, and Osbern
himself, pale and haggard, and like to one coming to
himself from a fainting fit or from excessive loss of blood,
appeared in sight. * What ! you, my child } ' cried Anselm.
* How are you.?' And the vision replied, 'Thrice the old
serpent rose up against me and thrice he fell back again, and
the bearward of the Lord God has delivered me.' * Anselm
opened his eyes, and Osbern was no more seen. But observe,'
continues Eadmer, * how the dead showed the same obedience
to the living which, living, he had been wont to show.'

* * Subvenite, sancti Dei, occurrite, angeli Dei, suscipientes animam ejus :
offerentes earn in conspectu Altissimi. Suscipiat eum Christus qui vocavit et in
sinu Abrahse angeli deduca nt. Offerentes,*

THE PRIOR^S REGRETS. 157

For an entire year the Saint said mass daily for the
repose of his friend's soul, except when he was prevented from
doing so, in which case he bade one of the monks say a missa
familiaris for this intention, repaying the debt at as early a
date as he could, and then saying a second mass for OsbernJ
He sent letters, too, in all directions begging prayers for the
soul so dear to him. Thus he wrote to his old friend
Gundulf : —

* Salute Dom Osbern, who is with you, as a dear brother
of mine, for my own dear dead Osbern's sake. . . . Wher-
ever Osbern is, his soul and mine are one ; so much so that
whatever is done for him in my lifetime I will accept as the
tribute of friendship which I might trust to have for myself
after my death, that my friends may not trouble themselves
about me when I am gone. Good-bye, good-bye, my
dearest friend ; and, to repay you your importunity with me,
I beg, and I beg, and I beg again of you, remember me,
and do not forget the soul of my dear Osbern ; and if I
seem too troublesome, forget me and remember him.'

About the same time he wrote to another friend at Can-
terbury : —

*Take my letter to Dom Gundulf, as written to you,
mutato nomine^ and think yours to be for him. But, as I
cannot pray to God enough, or implore my fellow men

* To say two or even three masses a day was not unusual. It is now done
only, I believe, on Christmas Day throughout the whole of Christendom, and on
All Souls' Day in Spain and Portugal and their colonies. Ademar, in his letter
on the Apostolate of St. Martial, says, * Duse missae quas hodie . . . continuas
. . . celebravi.' In the Life of St. Ulric we read, ' Respondit quia virum Dei
tamdiu expectasset donee ter missarum solemnia peregisset.' Bishop Gundulf
of Rochester used generally to say two masses a day, the second of them for the
dead. St. Hugh of Cluny said two masses daily, both of them for the living.
Alexander II. (Ep. cxxxii.) had expressed himself as follows on the subject :
* Sufficit sacerdoti missam unam in die celebrare. . . . Non modicum est unam
missam facere, et valde felix est qui unam digne celebrare potest, Quidam tamen
pro defunctis unam faciunt et alteram de die si necesse est.'

158 THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA.

sufficiently for the dear, dear soul of my departed brother
Osbern, I must again assure you that whatever I say to
Dom Gundulf in my letters, that I say to you. The Lord
Abbot and the whole of our congregation salute you and
Dom Gundulf, rendering you hearty thanks for your
presents, and still heartier for your zeal and goodness.
Good-bye, and think of the soul of Osbern, my second
self, not as his soul, but as mine.'

And, in another letter to Gundulf, we have the fol-
lowing :— -

' Since all who are dear to me are dear to you, place
in a group together with me in the chamber of your
memory, where I always keep my place, those friends of
mine of whom I have told you, as wishing to be bound
by the same links of friendship with us; set them in a
circle with me ; but, oh ! my dear friend, place Osbern's
shade in my bosom ; place him, I beg you, in my bosom,
nowhere else.' ^

Osbern must have died in the earlier part of 1072.
Before the tale of their year's masses was told Anselm's
victory was insured. Surely it was for this end that Osbern
had been called away, for all jealousies were now hushed
and quelled in presence of so supernatural a love. The
spectacle of that love subdued all hearts, and there was not
a man at Le Bee who did not take shame to himself as he
contrasted his own character with all this capacity of heaven-
born sympathy ; not one who did not bewail his lot when he
contrasted it with Osbern's happiness and joy, a happiness
and a joy which the heavenly-minded Prior had insured him
by his attachment in life and his succours after death ; not
one who did not commit himself and his dearest interests to
Anselm, in hope of inheriting Osbern's privilege. 'And he,'

» Epp. i. 4, 5, 7.

ABBOT HERLWIN'S BASILICA, 159

says Eadmer, ' giving thanks to God, became all things to all
men, that he might save all'

Thus a new era was about to begin at Le Bee, and Pro-
vidence had so ordered things that the change should be
symbolised and illustrated by the removal of the community
to their new home.

The foundations of Lanfranc's basilica were laid, as we
have seen, in the spring of 1058 ; and the fabric would seem
to have been completed in 1066. Alas for us that it should
have perished ! for, if I am not mistaken, it marked a new
epoch in the history of ecclesiastical architecture in Nor-
mandy. Alas, too, that the name of the architect should not
have been preserved, nor any account of him ! for I suspect
that he was a master-builder from Pavia and a relation of
Lanfranc's. Nevertheless, although the fabric has perished,
and although we know not whence its designer came, time
and change have spared us one or two data which seem to
prove that in at least some of its more important details it
was constructed on the model of the basilica of San Michele
in Lanfranc's native city ; and I trust that I am not presump-
tuous in turning those data to account and attempting a
theoretical reconstruction of its ground plan.

The nave, then, was, as I have reason to believe, some
hundred and fifty feet long by thirty-two feet wide, and was
flanked on either side by an aisle of twenty feet in width ;
the western limb of the building was thus a hundred and
fifty feet long and seventy-two feet wide from wall to wall.
Nave and aisles were divided into seven bays by two rows of
semicircular arches which rested on moulded shafts eight feet
thick or nearly so, as measured from north to south or
east to west, breast high above the level of the floor. The
pillars, however, which stood at the junction of nave and
transept were much more massive than those to the west of
them. The clear distance from pier to opposite pier across
the nave was slightly over twenty-four feet ; the clear distance

i6o ABBOT HERLWIN'S THIRD ABBEY.

from pier to pier up the church was slightly under twelve feet.
East of the nave and its aisles was the transept, thirty-two
feet deep and a hundred feet from north to south. The
eastern limb, like the nave, was separated from the transept
by two massive piers, and consisted of two bays terminated
by a semicircular apse, and flanked on either side with two
collateral bays similar in area to those on either side of the
nave. Each of these collateral bays in the eastern limb was
a separate chapel with an orientated altar. There were also
four altars in the transept, two on either side of the choir
arch.

The three easternmost bays of the nave were enclosed,
except on the side nearest the sanctuary, so as to form a
choir for the monks, who had two entrances to the church,
one from the cloister into the south aisle, and another in the
southern extremity of the transept.

The four massive piers at the central portion of the church
supported a tower of no great height, in which the bells were
hung. I suspect that there were no towers at the western
end, which was pierced with three doorways — round-headed
of course, for the style was Lombard romanesque — and by
one row of small windows. The sills of the windows which
lighted the aisles were about twelve feet from the floor.

The whole of this work, including, perhaps, the decora-
tion of the ceiling, v/hich was flat and panelled in wood, was
completed, as I have said, in about eight years after the lay-
ing of the first stone by Abbot Herlwin in 1058.

In 1067 ' he began the other buildings of the new abbey.
These all stood south of the church and were arranged on

• I am indebted for this piece of information not to any documents proper to
Le Bee, but to the Chj-onicon Smtcti Maxentii, published by Dom Bouquet
(xi. 220). 'A.D. mlxvii. Herluinus fundavit suum monasterium.' This is the
only notice of the fact which I have seen, and the context gives a curious proof
its accuracy, for it states that in 1067 Quadragesima Sunday fell on February
which it did.

THE CLOSE OF AN OLD ERA. t6i

the usual Benedictine plan. The chapter-house, which had
an interior dimension of some forty-two feet square, stood
alongside of the eastern limb of the basilica, and opened by
a large door in its western side into a hall or lobby, the
north side of which was formed by the southern termination
of the transept. The western exit from this hall opened
into the cloister, and from its south side, as I conjecture, rose
the staircase to the dormitory, whilst its north was pierced
with a doorway into the transept. Each side of the cloister
measured from ninety-five to a hundred feet, its northern
side corresponding with five bays of the nave.

By the summer of 1073 the work was sufficiently ad-
vanced for Herlwin to resolve on moving his monks to their
new home before the approach of winter.

On the last day, then, of October in the year 1073 Herl-
win and Anselm and their monks, after partaking of a slight
refection — for the day was a fast — went into the church and
ranged themselves into processional order. That humble
temple was endeared to them by sacred and varied associa-
tions. It was there that Gotbert beheld the Queen of
Heaven, and apostles singing before her in a blaze of glory ;
there that Gundulf, another sacristan, had a special place
assigned him, whither at will he might retire to pray and
weep unobserved before Our Lady of Le Bee ; there that
Anselm nearly fourteen years ago made his memorable
profession, and quite recently beheld the pale shade of
Osbern. And Osbern's ashes lay hard by, in the cemetery
that sloped slowly to the rivulet. As they all stood there
awaiting the signal to depart, many a heart swelled and
many an eye grew dim. But enough ; the western door un-
folds, the cross passes on before, and the shortening day and
falling leaves of autumn are gladdened by a hymn in which all
regrets for the past and all hopes for the future are together
swallowed up in a common sentiment of humble and thank-

VOL. I. M

t62 the inauguration of the new era.

ful adoration. * Tibi laus, tibi gloria, tibi gratiarum actio in
saecula sempiterna, O beata Trinitas.' '

That hymn is not so well known as it deserves to be,
and but for some few fragments preserved in the Roman
Breviary its name would fall unfamiliarly on the ear of most
of us : O beata Trinitas. But it is an august and magnificent
composition ; and nothing could more accurately have
accorded with those rare speculations in which Anselm was
already employed, and which must engage our own attention
in the next chapter.

' The O beata Trinitas is attributed to Alcuin, and is to be found amongst
his works. It is a lengthy but exquisite composition ; a profound theological
treatise in rhythmical form. I am sorry that it is too long for transcription.

i63

CHAPTER VI.

ARCHBISHOP LANFRANC : THE MONOLOGION.

It was at an early part of the period embraced by the last
chapter that three theological students in a recently erected
monastery in Lower Normandy entertained, or rather
employed, themselves — for they were less in jest than in
earnest — during a brief cessation in a lecture on Holy
Scripture by endeavouring to peer into the future after a
fashion which, quaint as it was, has not even yet died alto-
gether out in our own country. The book of the Gospels
being in the hand of one of the three friends at a moment
when the lecturer's attention was called off from his work,
they resolved that each of them in his turn should open the
sacred volume at random, and in the passage first offered
thus to his notice accept a Divine intimation of the lot that
was to be his own, it being their special wish to learn which
of them was to be an abbot and which a bishop.' The first
to investigate his destiny was rewarded with the words,

* Fidelis servus et prudens, quem constituit Dominus super
familiam suam ; ' and the second with others not unlike them,

* Euge, serve bone et fidelis ; intra in gaudium Domini tui ; *
but the third, whose name has not been recorded, was
unlucky enough to light upon a text which, whatever it may
have been, galled and fretted him. The other two, either
amused at his discomfiture or entertained by the words
which had caused it, broke out into fits of laughter, loud

' ' Experiamur, inquiunt, revolutione foliorum, quis nostrum futurus sit abbas,
quis episcopus.'— Gml. Malm. De Gest. Pantif. Angl. lib. i. De Ep. Roff.

M 2

i64 PROGNOSTICS.

enough to bring back the lecturer, who no sooner heard what
had taken place than with all gravity and seriousness he
foretold that the first would some day be a bishop, and the
second an abbot ; but that the third would retrace the steps
which had brought him to the cloister, and lapse into the
slippery ways of the secular life.

It would, of course, be both unjust and unphilosophical
harshly to censure this rather solemn diversion of three
theological students who belonged to an age in which the
use of any substitutes, provided only that they were Christian,
for the sortileges of paganism was in itself a victory for
Christianity, and to a country only separated by a narrow
streak of sea from that England whose faith was still dis-
figured by many remnants of heathenism. But this con-
sideration is scarcely adequate to the case ; for the lecturer
accepted the three prognostics with perhaps even a fuller
confidence than his disciples, and the lecturer was not a
Norman. Nor were his hearers immature and thoughtless
youths. One of them, the future bishop, was between forty
and fifty years of age, and was none other than St. Anselm's
friend Gundulf; the future abbot was Walter, who subse-
quently administered Evesham ; the abbey to which they
belonged was St. Stephen's at Caen, and their lecturer no
less a man than Lanfranc himself.

Of all prognostics— prognostic was the proper technical
name for these forecasts drawn from the inspired page —
none was more sacred than that which at the consecration oi
a bishop gave mysterious hint of what was now to be. I
need scarcely say that there is an interval in the course of
that function during which, whilst the bishop elect kneels at
the foot of the altar, the book of the Gospels is held open
across his shoulders, but v/ith the text towards him. The
book is opened at random, and the prognostic of Lanfranc
and his contemporaries was the first passage on the left-hand
page. When Hernost, Anselm's immediate junior at Le Bee,

LANFRANCS PROGNOSTIC. 165

was in 1075 consecrated to the see of Rochester, the book
opened at the words 'Cito proferte stolam primam.' * As
soon as the chief officiant heard this, he replied that Hernost
would not live lon^ ; nor did he. The chief officiant was
Lanfranc.

But Lanfranc's own pivgnosticoii on August 29, 1070,
is of peculiar interest to all who love to trace his relations
with Le Bee during Anselm's priorate. It was this : ' Date
eleemosynam, et ecce omnia munda sunt vobis.' ^ The
bystanders received it with murmurs of delight, and he
himself no sooner heard the words than he cried, his coun-
tenance lighting up with joy, * Let us, then, contend one with
the other, Thou, O God, in giving, and I in giving away,*

' 'Bring forth quickly the first robe,' as the Douay version has it. The
phrase stola pri7na was held to symbolise the state of the beatified soul pending
the resurrection of the body. See S. Gregj. Magn. on Job xlii. 1 1 ; S. Bernard,
Serin, de Diversis, xli. § 12, and Serm. iii. in Fest. omniwn Sanctorum ; St.
Anselm, Med. ix., and Med. xvii., falsely attributed, however, to him ( ' Postrem6
et munda sindone primse stoloe spirit um meum involve in qua requiescam ....
die autem tertio .... me indignum resuscita ut in carne mea videam
claritatem tuam.' 'Expectant fideles .... ut in die resurrectionis duplici
stola, scilicet corporis et animse perpetua felicitate fruantur ') ; Radulf. Ardens,
liomilise in Ep. et Evang. Domini P. I. hom i. ('corpus cum anima stol^
gaudebit immortalitatis '). In the tract F>e Inventione Sanctce Cruets Wal-
thamensis, published in Michel's Chroniques Anglo- Normandes, we read of
Edward the Confessor, ' Dissoluta igitur hujus habitationis domo, domum non
manufactam accepit rex ille gloriosus in caelis .... decoratus una stola,
securusque de reliqua.'

2 Milo Crispin says, ' Repertum est super caput ejus evangelicum dictum
Date eleemosynam,' &c. ... It seems just possible that the book may have
been held over the head, and not across the shoulders, in the case of an Archbishop
of Canterbury. There certainly were differences of detail which distinguished
the consecration of the Primate of the Britains from that of a suffragan.
Abbots as well as bishops had their prognosticon, which might be sought on
other solemn occasions besides that of consecration. Guibert of Nogent {De Vita
sua, iv. 3, p. 491) gives a curious account of his own on his taking possession
of his monastery. Guibert tells us of a Bishop of Laon at whose consecration
the book was opened at a blank page ' ac si diceret. De eo nihil vaticinabor
cum nulli pene futuri sint actus, ' and who died in a month or two ; and of
another — and he was not the first to whom this happened — whose prognosticon
was, 'Tuam animam pertransibit gladius.' He was still alive when Guibert
wrote. ' What bad luck awaits him, God knows,' exclaims the writer {ib. pp.
499> 5'f4)- St. y^nXiiQjx'?, pi'ognosdcon was 'Ecce vere Israelita in quo dolus non
e^H (clxxix. 1747D).

i66 LANFRANCS PRESENTS TO LE EEC,

and from that moment obeyed the consolatory precept with
no less alacrity, no less fervour, and no less constancy, than
if an angel had planted finger on the text. Witness his
charities to the poor, which were boundless so long as
prudence set no limit to them, and particularly such poor as
by relationship to any of his own monks seemed to have
pecuHar claim on his bounty ; witness his spontaneous lar-
gesses to poverty-stricken monasteries and to needy clergy-
men ; witness his famous recovery to the see of Canterbury
of estates wrested from it by a kinsman of the Conqueror's ;
witness the churches and manor houses which he built or
reconstructed throughout his domains, and religious and elee-
mosynary edifices erected in the primatial city, the metro-
politan church of which would alone have sufficed to per-
petuate the name of Lanfranc as the restorer of the ancient
glories of Canterbury and the author of its new.

Nor was Le Bee forgotten by his generosity — the home in
which he had spent full twenty years of his life. For although
its inmates could in 1073 boast the possession of a church
which had, perhaps, but one rival in the duchy, the builder had
been paid out of numerous small pecuniary contributions, and
their income from real property was scarcely greater then than
it had been in 1058, when Lanfranc 's school was reopened,
or in 1062, when it was permanently closed. The house was
not without benefactors, it is true, but the benefactions took
the form of alms, not of endowments ; and Le Bee, so far from
being a wealthy institution during Anselm's priorate, was not
even self-supporting when he was elected abbot in 1078. Its
fortunes were eventually secured by endowments in England ;
but until these were settled on it, its best, indeed its only con-
siderable, benefactor was Lanfranc, whose messengers never
crossed the Channel empty-handed,* but always brought pre-
sents in money, and sometimes gifts of other kinds for

' On one occasion he infringed the rule, but sent such an apology for the
omission as drew from Anselm one of his own characteristic letters {Ep. i. 41).

DOM GIRARD OF ARRAS, i6%

the embellishment of its church, such as the embroidery
described by William of Malmesbury, in which, precious
as was the material, the skill of the worker had given it a
new value all its own, and the eye of the beholder wandered
from floor to roof, charmed and dazzled by contrasted play of
colour, by brilliancy of tint, and by exquisite harmony of
composition.'

And Lanfranc's attachment to his old home was displayed
in other ways than in direct contributions to its money chest or
its treasury. Thus there was at Arras ^ a monetarius named
Girard — minter, no doubt, to the Abbot of St. Vaast — who was
very anxious to assume the religious habit of Le Bee, but was
unable to do so on account of certain grave pecuniary em-
barrassments. When the Archbishop heard of the case he at
once proposed to contribute no less than a hundred solidi —
a sum equivalent to two hundred pounds sterling of our modern
money — in liquidation of Girard's liabilities. Girard went to
Canterbury, and there, after giving the prelate, under oath
as it would appear, an exact account of his pecuniary condi-
tion, received not only what was wanted for the discharge of
his debts, but enough besides to make a handsome donation
to the monastery of his choice upon his reception as one of its
members.

The correspondence upon Girard's case is too long and
discursive for reproduction in these pages, but it shows, past
possibility of mistake, that if Anselm was all aflame with
desire to receive into his community those who for the good
of their souls were anxious to form part of it, his true and
faithful friend Archbishop Lanfranc was not less eager to
gratify the spiritual yearnings and relieve the temporal neces-

' De Gest. Pontif. Angl. lib. i.

2 There seems to have been a famous guild of goldsmiths— a caritas
monetariorum—Sii Arras. One of them made the famous reliquary which con-
tained the relics of the Blessed Virgin preserved at Laon (see Hermann, De
Miraculis S. Marice T.audun). There is also record of a victis monetariorum.

1 68 THE YOUNGER LANE RANG.

sities of the saintly Prior. Girard's was the last profession
made in the old or second monastery.*

And, not satisfied that Girard should go to Le Bee with a
full purse, the generous Archbishop about the same time com-
mitted to Anselm's care two young men sent by him from
Italy to Canterbury whilst he was on his journey to Rome for
the pallium in 1071. The correspondence relating to one of
the two can scarcely fail to interest the reader. The first
letter is from Anselm : —

*We are debtors without hope of discharge to the
paternal kindness which keeps us ever present to your
thoughts ; and if we cannot always give tongue to our
gratitude, the moment has come when we may not impose
silence on it. Such is the exuberance of your kindness that
you have now at last by the most convincing of arguments
proved it to be, what we well know it was, most real and
genuine ; and have by the sacredest of pledges shown it to
be, what we had no doubt of ever finding it, unalterable.
For you have sent us your dear nephew Lanfranc, and
have desired that he should enter religion in our monastery
in preference to all others. None would willingly entrust
his dearest kinsman to any but such as are themselves dear
to him ; and it is unlikely that he should not love the home
where that dear one dwells. So that in sending your
nephew hither you have evinced not only the constancy of
your attachment to us, but, what we equally prize, your
conviction of our attachment to you. iThanks therefore
do we render first to Him from whom is every good, and
then to you {paterncB vestrce sublimitati) that you thus love
us, thanks that you thus trust us, thanks that you thus con-
fide to us so precious a pledge of your love and of your

' Girard's affairs were settled by the Archbishop in the early part of 1073, and
he seems to have entered upon his novitiate soon after the following Easter. It
was in the intervening Lent, the Lent of 1073, that young Lanfranc and his friend
Guido reached Le Bee. They were professed without delay.

A LETTER FROM THE PRIMATE. 169

trust. Accept this expression of gratitude not only as
mine, but as that of our whole community.

' But I am now fain to add in my own name, and in few
words, and as to one who understands all my meaning, that
even though of late you have enhanced the unequal burden
you once laid on me, the heavy burden of the priorate, you
have lightened its weight most materially ; and, at a
moment when my weakness groaned beneath the load, you
have made me, I will not say unwilling, but as nearly
unwilling as may be to set it down.' '

The Archbishop, than whom none could better appreciate
the solid argument that underlay what a careless reader migh'^
regard as a mere rhetorical flourish, replied as follows : —

^Domino, patri, fratri, amico Anselmo, Lanfrancu^
peccator, perpetiiam d Deo salutem}

* What is best for me you well know {Quid mihi expediai
beatitudo vestra optimk novit), for on my return to England>
as on my journey to Rome, I communicated to you {sanctitatl
vestrce) all that the occasion seemed to require from me.
Pray, therefore, pray, and ask your friends and all you love
to unite with you in praying, that Almighty God may be
pleased either to make me more fruitful for His glory than
I am, or to remove my soul from this prison of the flesh in
the confession of His holy name. For this land in which
we are reels under the daily shocks of so many and so
great afflictions, is defiled with so many adulteries and other
abominations, that there is scarcely any order of men who
care for their own souls, or even so much as care to hear the
salutary teaching which might instruct them to improve-
ment in the sight of God.

' Ep. i. 19. Guido, Lanfranc, and Girard would seem between them to have
made the poor Prior quite a rich man for the moment. Hence, perhaps, the com-
pletion of the new building in the course of the following summer.

^ Nothing was more usual in Lanfranc's letters than such descriptions of himself
as indignus mitistes, indignus vocari antistes, and peccator.

I70 A LETTER TO THE PRIMATE.

* It was a pleasure to me to receive the letter you sent
me by Dom Robert,' and a still greater one to read it.
Indeed,! read it again now, and treasure it ; and treasuring
it read it even once again, with how much delight I cannot
express to you in writing ; because, as that letter informs
me, you have received my dearest nephew,^ whom I love as

1 love my own soul, with no small pleasure, as discovering
in my committal of him to your care a fresh assurance of
my love for you {amoris mei — a pretty change from Anselm's
dilectio) and, though last not least, because the burden of
your office, which before seemed too heavy to carry, has
been lightened by his arrival, I declare to you without
waste of words, and what I truly feel, that even if he were
living in the same house with pagans I should have a
kindlier feeling {plus diligerem, not of course amarem) for
pagans than for any other, and any worldly goods I had
should be at their disposal. So that I render all the thanks
of which I am capable to God, to the Lord Abbot, and to all
of you ; for I always find you to be towards me and all who
are dear to me such as I hoped to find you.' ^

The Prior of Le Bee replied : —

* Domino reverendo^patri vere diligendo et dilecto "* catholiccB
matri amplectendo archiepiscopo Lanfranco f rater Anselmus
suiis^ quod dignius potest, totus suus.

' Dom Robert seems to have been a confidential messenger between the Arch-
bishop and the Prior.

2 *■ Dtdcissimum mihi fralris meifilium.'' ' B. Lanfranci (Ep. 43).

* Our conventional dear, as when we say ' dear sir,' • dear madam,' represents
fairly enough the Latin dilectus, dilecta. Thus St. Anselm writes to Queen
Matilda, ' Dominse et filiae in Deo dilectce,' and to Archbishop Hugh of Lyons,
* Domino et patri cum dilectione reverendo et cum reverentia diligendo ....
Hugoni.' Precisely thus Spenser, dedicating the Faery Queene to the sovereign,
says —

' The which to heare vouchsafe, O dearest dread, a while.'

The word dread, again, in this line represents the Latin reverentia, and the well-
remembered ' most dread sovereign' is a perpetuation of the mediaeval j-evercn-
dissime.

DOM MAURICE. 171

* Whenever you are pleased to learn that I am pleased, I
myself experience a new pleasure, and what was at first a
great pleasure becomes a greater pleasure still. You tell
me that you are happy in finding that I, not to say others
also, was delighted to receive our dearest Lanfranc, your
nephew. My first joy therefore is enhanced by yours, and
the satisfaction which I proved in the person of one so loved
by you, though ever fresh, ii renewed by that enhancement ;
an enhancement this, and a renewal, measurable, I do not
blush to say, by nothing else than my own satisfaction in
finding how well it has fared with my Maurice, whom you
are severing, and severing for yourself, from one by whom
he is loved more than by another, and whom he loves as he
loves no one else. Do you yourself judge, therefore, what a
debt you are contracting to him. For, be the subject and
object of so singular a love no matter how worthless, still
you owe it to Maurice that he neither love less nor be less
loved than heretofore. But, in short, I know the right
measure of your justice, and you know the degree of his
love and mine one for the other. I say no more in recom-
mendation of him to your care. As to his headache, it is
my first and chief request to you, and a request which I
press with all possible urgency, that for the love of God and
your eternal reward you will have the case at your own
instance as thoroughly examined and attended to as may
be by your dear friend Dom Albert.'

This short correspondence may not have been without
interest to the reader, for it is a fair specimen of the best
epistolary style of the age ; it gives us a glimpse of the state
of England in the year 1073 ; it shows the affectionate-
ness and unreserve of the friendship that had for fifteen
years subsisted between Lanfranc and Anselm ; it displays
the generosity of Lanfranc's attachment to his old home ; it
convinces us that to that generosity the community of Le Bee

172 DOM MAURICE SENT TO ENGLAND.

owed their ultimate deliverance from a condition of prolonged
and pinching penury; and it introduces to us one whose name
has been already mentioned in these pages, a conscholastiats
of Anselm's who accompanied or followed him to Le Bee in
1059 — Dom Maurice.'

Lanfranc had been in quest of a monk, young in years
but not immature in character, of irreproachable life and
cultivated intellect, who should take in hand some special
work for him ; what work we are not informed, but in all likeli-
hood, if the sequel may be trusted, that of collating and
transcribing manuscripts. The required conditions were all
united in Maurice, the favourite disciple and from his very
boyhood the inseparable friend and companion of Anselm.'^

Dom Maurice, therefore, was shipped off to England, carry-
ing with him a budget of letters all wet with the Prior's tears ;
letters to the Archbishop, to Prior Henry, to Gundulf, his old
friend and rival in sanctity — another of his many losses due
to Lanfranc, to Dom Herlwin — another migration from Le
Bee, and to Dom Albert the physician ; letters overflowing
with a tenderness, a delicacy, a considerateness, and a pathos
such as surprise even the reader who thinks he knows some-
thing of St. Anselm into new admiration of a character whose
sweetness is without a parallel.

But the regret of Anselm and Maurice at parting from
each other was something more than the mutual sorrow of
two singularly susceptible and sympathetic natures ; it had

' The compilers of the Histoire litU'raire de la France say that the i\i\t dominus
* ne s'accordait alors qu'aux moines d'un merite distingue ou constitues en charge
ou en dignite.' There could not be a greater mistake. Albert the physician was
not a monk ; the younger Lanfranc was called Dom before he was even a pos-
tulant, so was Roger of Caen, so were many others.

[ fear these gentlemen were not very accurate, or it may be my own peculiar
misfortune never to open their work without finding a mistake.

^ (l) Anselm had known him from his boyhood ; {2) St, Maurice was the patron
saint of Transjuran Burgundy, and was no doubt the personal patron of the young
man who (3) was professed at Le Bee either with Anselm or soon after him (see
Appendix), I suspect that Rodulf, Ansfred, and Maurice all accompanied or fol-
olwed him from Aosta.

DOM MAURICE'S TRIALS IN ENGLAND, 173

an intellectual as well as a moral element. If Anselm was
the most original teacher, the acutest reasoner, and the pro-
foundest philosopher of his age, Maurice was the teacher's,
reasoner's, philosopher's favourite disciple. Lanfranc, it is
true, had long ago gauged the Prior's intellectual stature, and
estimated his capabilities of enterprise ; but Maurice knew
more than Lanfranc had even suspected of his speculative
flights. To say that Maurice had not only been instructed
in collating, correcting, and transcribing the literary treasures
which Anselm lost no opportunity of culling from whatever
source, but had learnt from him the value of accurate scholar-
ship, of severe and exact theology, and of scientific criticism,
would be saying much indeed, but after all too little ; for he
had been taken into the confidence of Anselm's genius with
an intimacy shared by few within the walls of Le Bee, and
by none, absolutely none, outside them ; and he had done
justice to that confidence. It was not therefore without one
pang more that Anselm saw Dom Maurice transplanted to a
new home, where, always excepting the Archbishop and a
few others, he would be doomed to live among barbarians.
The word sounds harsh, but the men who used it saw no in-
justice in it ; for, blind our judgment as we may, the facts
remain that the grain of the Saxon nature was coarse, that the
English at the period of the Conquest were addicted to pagan
superstitions, that their tastes and habits were gross, that
they loved to eat enormously of ill-selected dishes and drank
strong ale to scandalous excess, that their public monuments
were mean and inartistic, that their scholarship, or such ill-
digested knowledge as may be adorned with the name, was
contemptible, that in morals and intellect the secular clergy
were only not worse than their stupid brethren of the laity,
and the regular clergy only not worse than the secular,
boorish and unschooled.* It was therefore from intellectual

' Agrestes et illitterati.

174 ST. AUGUSTINE, ' DE TRINITATE:

as well as from moral sympathy with his young friend that
the bereaved Prior wrote to Dom Herlwin of Canterbury : —

* I commend Dom Maurice to you. You well know
how fond we are of each other, and I should like him to be
happy enough to have found in you a brother whilst living
amongst barbari} and you to make it evident that, far re-
moved though you be from me, you have retained your
place in my catalogue of friends.'

But, dear as Maurice was to Anselm by reason of his
moral and intellectual endowments, his name claims a very
special interest from us, inasmuch as there can be little ques-
tion that but for him the argument of his master's * Monolo-
gion ' would never have been committed to parchment, or
that, even if committed to parchment, it might never have
been allowed to pass beyond the walls of Le Bee. He had
not failed to remark that Anselm's arguments concerning the
existence and being of God appertained to a domain of
thought unattempted by St. Augustine, whose treatise * De
Trinitate ' had been for six centuries the common property of
Christendom. Undoubtedly St. Augustine had discerned in
man's spiritual constitution, and even in the phenomena

' It may indeed be objected that the word barbari need not mean more than
foreign. On the other hand it may fairly be doubted whether the word has not
always carried with it a certain ethical flavour suggestive of outlandishness or
boorishness. Thus Ovid sings of the open-mouthed savages who could not have
appreciated his language, even had they understood it : —

' Barbarus hie ego sum ; quia non intelligor ulli :
Et rident stolidi verba Latina Getae.'
And it is scarcely probable that the word should ever have lacked that flavour in
the Latin of St. Anselm's days. 1 know of no case, with the exception of one
presently to be noted, in which it can have meant no more than foreign^ but of
several, some of them amusing enough, in which it meant nothing less than bar-
barous. As regards our own country, St. Yves of Chartres once wrote to an
Archbishop of York as follows : — ' Benedictus Deus qui conversationem vestram
lucere facit in tenebris barbarae nationis ' (Ep. 215).

The exceptional case to which I referred just now makes good rather than
disproves my assertion ; so at least I think. It is where Rodulf Glaber in the
preface to his History contrasts orbis Romanus with transmarincE seu barbarce
provincicc.

ST. AN S ELM'S ARGUMENT. 175

of the physical world, the bases of an inductive argument
whence might be drawn corroborative proof of the verity
that in God, who is One, there is such a threefold Personality
as Divine revelation has made known to us. Undoubtedly,
to borrow his own phrase, St. Augustine had found * a certain
series of trinities pervading the physical universe, whence
ascending step by step and ever discerning a like pheno-
menon, he had crowned his work by seeking, and seeking
not in vain, such an intimation in man's spiritual being of the
supreme mysterious Trinity as we hope to find when we
search after God.' ^ Undoubtedly St. Augustine had de-
tected in the mind, the understanding, and the will of man in
relation to what is outside of him, and as regards himself in
his consciousness of his own existence, his experimental
knowledge of self, and his love of self, a certain adumbration
of the mystery that He to whose image man was created is
personally Three whilst essentially One. But, by way of
philosophical argument, this was the utmost that he had
done. Anselm's pupils, however, had sufficient penetration
to perceive that the discursive remarks which that argument
had suggested to their lecturer were more than the mere
scholia of a skilful commentator, and better than the mere
deductions of a practised expositor, and that, not satisfied
with elucidating revealed dogma by what man knows of him-
self and sees in the outer world, he was striking out an entirely
new ct priori path, and elaborating an argument which, start-
ing from our conception of what the Supreme Being must
necessarily be, compels us to own in Him such a Trinity of
Persons as revelation has made known to us.

And if they were charmed by the novelty and persuasive-
ness of his argument, they were also charmed by the philo-
sophical method of which it was an illustration.

Whatever God has revealed is true, and faith accepts

' S. Aug. De Fid. Trin. lib. xv. cap. ii.

176 FAITH AND REASON.

what God has revealed with an implicit credence which dis-
dains all idea of any need of demonstration to establish its
credibility. To think such demonstration necessary were to
set out for Olympus provided with poles and ropes and the
other usual appliances for the support of tottering edifices, in
hope of making the mountain so firm as not to shake and
topple over before the first person who should stumble at its
base.* Nevertheless, true though it be that the subject-matter
of revelation has no need of demonstration by the efforts of
reason, yet, inasmuch as reason as well as faith is the gift of
God, it is inconceivable that the legitimate deductions formed
by the one should be at variance with the facts recognised by
the other ; so that reason rightly exercised plays her proper
part in suggesting the credibility of what is already believed,
in exhibiting and elucidating its correspondence with her own
deductions, and thus in justifying and making good its claim
on us. Her office \s probare.

Maurice, therefore, and his fellows, fascinated by the
charms of a method as new in scientific theology as the
Baconian method and the Newtonian were subsequently new
in other domains, and fascinated with the enchantment that
only comes from intellectual certitude, entreated their master
to compose for their perusal an essay elaborated in illustration
of it.'^ They begged him, that is to say, to compose an essay

' S. Anselmi De Fide Trinitatis, cap. i.

"^ It was to be an exeniplum meditandi de ratione /idei— that is to say, a speci-
men of the method of thinking out a thing for oneself, the specific object being to
show that the assumptions of faith and the deductions of r ason on the given subject-
matter are in harmony with each other. If it be objected that my explanation of
St. Anselm's Latin phrase is verbose, I reply that St. Anselm's Latin is only too
happily concise, and that I prefer verbosity with truth to concinnity with a false
impression. I cannot translate the phrase word for word and say that the treatise
was ' an example of meditation on the reason of faith. ' The treatise is not a
meditation ; much less is it a treatise on the reason of faith. Such unfaithful
fidelity of rendering does much mischief both to scholarship and to theology. Not
all conversatio is conversation ; not every nudus is naked ; memoria is not in
every case memory, nor does meditor always mean I meditate. When Tityrus
practised on his reed his employment was a mediiaiio, but it certainly was not a
meditation. The scientific search after the cause of the perturbation in Jupiter's

AN ILLUSTRATIVE ESSAY. 177

in proof of the position that the dogmas of revelation coincide
with the a priori conclusions of reason. The chief subject
to be handled in this essay was the Being of God.

Anselm refused their request, and persisted in refusing ;
but in the end their importunities vanquished him. * I
yielded the less unwillingly,' he says, 'as hoping that my
efforts would not be known beyond our own limited circle,
and that these my brethren growing tired of the treatise as
a thing of little value, it would come to be neglected and
forgotten. For I only too well know that if it was hard to
put a stop to their persecution of me, it was harder still to
comply with the terms of their request.'

But the document had not been long written before he
saw that no such fate awaited it. First one, then another
claimed permission to read it ; and slowly the number grew
of enthusiastic students who had weighed each phrase, pur-
orbit was not a meditation, but it might not improperly be called a meditatio.
When St. Anselm calls his work an exemphtm meditandi he means to say that it is
a sample or specimen of the thinking-out method — let me be forgiven a very bar-
barous phrase — of the thinking-out method as opposed to the customary dialogue ;
a specimen, that is to say, of the way in which a man may solve an intellectual
problem for himself in the silence of his own bosom. The treatise is no more a
meditation— as the word meditation is usually understood — than it is an oratorio.

And St. Anselm himself explains the word meditandi in the sense which I
assign to it ; for in the opening of his subsequent treatise, the Proslogion^ he says
that he had written this in persond alicujus taciti secum ratiocinando qtice nesciat
investigantis.

Nor is the subject of the treatise the * reason of faith,' whatever those words may
mean ; I allude, as before, to Dean Church's rendering of the Latin. Its subject
is the Being of God ; and the M^ords de ratione fidei are designed to describe not
by any means its subject, but its method, its plan, its design. The subject might
have been original sin or some other ; but, provided only that the treatise were
written in persond alicujus tacite secum ratiocinando qtice nesciat investigantis,
it was an exetnplum meditandi \ and, provided that the author's object were to show
how exactly the deductions of pure reason are in harmony with revealed truth, it
was an exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei.

Let me add that my interpretation of the words exemplum meditandi de ratione
fidei is at once justified and illustrated by Eadmer's account of the work ; and
Eadmer was no mean Latinist. ' Fecit quoque libellum unum quem Monologium
appellavit. Solus enim in eo et secum loquitur, ac tacita omni auctoritate Divinse
scripturae quid Deus sit sola ratione quaerit et invenit ; et quod vera fides de Deo
sentit invincibili ratione sic nee aliter esse probat et astruit. ' — Vita^ cap. iii. § 25.

VOL. I. N

178 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ESSAY.

sued each argument from premises to conclusion, and regaled
themselves to heart's content on the nameless poetry with
which, as in mountain ranges bathed with hues from heaven,
its severest and hardiest passages are all aglow. They had
been too well schooled, first by Lanfranc and then by Lan-
franc's greater disciple, not to recognise much at least of its
worth ; and rare was the day on which some one of them
might not be observed poring with intent pale face over its
clearly-written page, heedless of all besides and captivated
by its sublimity of idea, by its concinnity of reasoning, by
the majestic ease and gradual victorious march of the con-
stituent divisions of its argument, by its pomp of termi-
nology, its lucid diction, and, more enthralling still, that
strange but indescribable melodiousness of thought and
phrase which marks none but the choicest exploits of human
genius, and convinces the reader of the exemplum meditandi
de ratione fidei that an author who could thus think and write
must have thought and written to the minstrelsy of those

solemn troops and sweet societies
That sing, and singing in their glory move,

and enjoy the vision of God face to face.

Others, too, there were who, touched by the growing en-
thusiasm, and proud to know that to one of their own com-
munity had been reserved the praise of striking out paths of
thought as sublime as they were new, craved permission after
they had read the essay to copy it for their own use, and so
in the author's phrase * condemn it to notice.' He withstood
their request with practised resolution ; but there is a point in
such contests beyond which resistance is not only unjust, but
unwise. The treatise had been of service to his brethren in
confirming their faith and informing their reason ; why, then,
should they not be allowed to make more intimate acquaint-
ance with it ? And if, in consequence of his too persistent
refusal, defective or interpolated copies should ever obtain a

DOM MAURICE'S ENTREATIES. 179

surreptitious currency, the blame would be attributed to him,
and not without reason, of any damage that might thence
accrue to the orthodox cause — a cause which was dearer to
him than life, and was at that time assailed by very able and
very vigorous opponents.

Maurice, too, at Canterbury was plying him with a cease-
less artillery of letters, all charged with two requests most
passionately urged, one of them in some sort an alternative
to the other ; and Maurice, who chief among his pupils had
prompted him tb essay the exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei,
but leaving Le Bee before it was finished, had not as yet
enjoyed its perusal ; Maurice, who finding in the agrestes et
illiterati monachi about him nothing to compensate for the
patrician refinement, the philosophical elevation, and the
saintly sweetness of his friend at Le Bee, had exhausted, but
exhausted in vain, all his powers of entreaty, persuasion, and
finesse to bend a prelate resolved to detain him where he
was ; Maurice, who to console his old master for their separa-
tion, intermitted nothing of the drudgery of school days long
past, in case that master should have left anything untaught ;
Maurice, who to please him, and give token of an undying
affection, occupied his leisure hours in reading all the Latin
classics he could seize, or else in copying for him medical
treatises of Hippocrates and Galen full of unmanageable
Greek words, and encumbered with unintelligible glosses ;
Maurice, who had so many and such incomparable claims on
Anselm's regard, had reason and justice on his side when
he prayed that if there was indeed too little hope of liis
ever returning to Le Bee to read the treatise, he might at
least be allowed to have a copy of it.

The Prior of Le Bee, however, well knew that if he
allowed a copy to remain in any custody but his own, dupli-
cates would soon see the day ; and yet — for he believed that
there were passages in it which might be misunderstood or
misrepresented — he questioned whether harm rather than

N 2

l8o THE AUTHOR'S PERPLEXITY.

good, or rather, whether harm as well as good, might not come
of its publication, and was more than half inclined to destroy
it once for all. This was a grave perplexity. He resolved,
therefore, as on another critical occasion fifteen years before
he had resolved, to consult the one man living in whose
judgment he implicitly confided, and to send a copy of the
libellus across the Channel so soon as that singularis con-
siliariiis who was just then in Rome should return to
Canterbury.

i8i

CHAPTER VII.

CONSECRATION OF THE NEW BASILICA : THE ' PROSLOGION.'

Four years had well-nigh passed since the peaceful All
Saints' Eve on which Herlwin and his monks took possession
of the new church, singing their O heata Trinitas, when, in
the early autumn of 1077, a whisper flew through cell and
cloister that the summus pontifex^ or, as he was sometimes
called, the apostolicus^ of the people beyond the sea was
at the gate. So he was, but scarcely in his character of
apostolicus ; for, on rounding the spur of the hill that over-
looked the monastery from the west, he had slipped the
episcopal ring from his finger, and, forgetful of his rank, was
already within the precinct and hurrying forward to greet the
abbot. Herlwin, eighty-two years of age, was an infirm and

' These designations, although applied par excellence to the successors of St.
Peter in the See of Rome, were not confined to them. The siminms pontifex of
a province is its archbishop ; of a patriarchate, its patriarch ; and of Christendom,
the Pope. Thus in Folcard's Life of St. Berlin, Wido, Archbishop of Rheims, is
termed sunwitis pontifex and sujnmus prcesul. As to the term apostolicus , there
is, of course, a sense in which it is applicable to any bishop ; as when St. Odo,
on his elevation to the see of Sherborne, is termed by his biographer /(2j^r apos-
tolicus ovium Dei, or when Halinard, Archbishop of Lyons, is thus described : —

* Factus apostolici consors et compos honoris,
Duxit apostolicam factis et nomine vitam.'

Then, again, there is a restricted sense in which it is used of the occupant of a
sedes apostolica, and it was in some such sense that it was applied to an Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. St. Odo after his death appeared and sent a message to his
designated successor. ' Nequaquam pallium patriarchatus sanctse Dorobernensis
ecclesise obtinebis, nee unquam in apostolica ejus sede sedebis.' Canterbury
was an apostolica sedes for a reason analogous to that which had made the see
of Alexandria a patriarchate. Its founder was sent to our shores direct by the
Pope. "What St. Peter had been to St. Mark, that was Gregory the Great to St.
Augustine of Canterbury.

i82 PRIMATE AND ABBOT.

bent old man, and no match for his friend in agility, though
Lanfranc had seen as many as fourscore summers. Ere,
therefore, the abbot could throw himself upon the ground
before the great Primate of the Britains, the great Primate of
the Britains was already falling prostrate before the abbot,
who laid hold of him and arrested the homage, himself to
experience the like treatment as he in his turn tried to pay
his reverence to the illustrious prelate. A long and touching
contest ensued — struggle is the very appropriate word em-
ployed by Milo Crispin, the prelate's biographer — a contest
which was only compromised when each of the old men fell
upon the other's neck and kissed him. On entering the
cloister, Lanfranc, again in pleasing contempt of the con-
ventionalities of a very ceremonious age, took his seat on the
long stone bench which ran round the walls facing the
quadrangle, and, looking as much at .home and as much like
his old self as if he had not been directing the destinies
of a kingdom for seven years, won the hearts of all by
calling to him first one and then another, first of the older
men his ancient friends, and then of the younger ones who
were children when he was prior, and finding a few appro-
priate words to say to each. The very nutriti were not
forgotten — those wondering round-eyed little oblates, minia-
ture monks in miniature hoods, who had been given or
bequeathed to religion by men and women hard bested by
the naughty world and desirous for their offspring of a
happier lot than their own. Tn the refectory, too, the great
prelate edified no less than in the cloister by taking his place
as monk amongst the other monks, instead of accepting the
seat of honour due to his rank, and by drinking from the
same cup and eating from the same dish as they did. And
when it was time to go into choir he refused to have the
episcopal chair prepared for him, but went into Anselm's
stall, playfully observing that he had not resigned his old
office and was prior still. Prior Anselm was probably absent

OCTOBER 23, 1077. 183

on one of the many errands imposed on him of late by the
abbot's inability to leave the monastery. -

Herlwin had long since resolved that none but Lanfranc
should consecrate his church; and now that a not unimportant
obstacle to the attainment of his wish had been removed by
the irremediable illness of the Archbishop of Rouen,^ he
found his guest more than ready to accede to the petition,
provided only that his business with the King were first
transacted.^ On resuming his journey the prelate left
behind him a bounty sufficient to keep the community in
food for a fortnight, and hurried on to Court, whence there
soon came a messenger announcing Monday, October 23,
as the day appointed for the consecration, and presenting
to Herlwin another of Lanfranc's unnumbered testimonies
of attachment to his old home, the unde fieret, the means for
discharging the incidental but inevitable expenses of so
important a solemnity.^

Gilbert Crispin, a member of the community, and subse-
quently Abbot of Westminster, has described the events of
the day with a fervour and a suppressed emotion that can
only be appreciated when we recollect that he belonged to a
family which yielded to none in its respect for the Abbot
of Le Bee ; that he had himself worn the habit at Le Bee in
his very childhood ; that his widowed mother, the Lady Eva,
dwelt in a house near to the monastery, whose inmates she
affectionately called her children; and that his father had
lived a benefactor of the house, had died a member of it, and

^ John of Avranches, Archbishop of Rouen, had had a paralytic seizure in the
summer, and was speechless. Le Bee was in his diocese. Since the repartition it
has been in that of Evreux.

2 Lanfranc had left Rome, I imagine, as soon as might be after the Feast of
SS. Peter and Paul, and approaching Normand^ late in August, had made for
Brionne, on the chance of finding the King there. Not finding him there, he
without dismounting rode on to Le Bee, whence, after a short stay, he proceeded
to Rouen.

^ St. Stephen's Abbey Church at Caen was consecrated on September 13,
and Bayeux Cathedral, as it would seem, soon afterwards. Lanfranc was present
on both occasions.

1 84 THE CONSECRATING PRELATES.

lay buried beneath the cloister which witnessed the pro-
cession of monks, abbots, and bishops on that memorable
occasion.^ Of bishops there seem to have been five in
addition to the principal officiant. One of them was Odo, a
legitimate son of the Conqueror's mother, the astute, ambi-
tious, grasping prelate who had held an episcopal see
almost from boyhood,^ and was now vicedominus of the con-
quered kingdom, and Earl of Kent as well as Bishop of
Bayeux ; another was Gilbert Fitzosbern, of Evreux,^ a tall
man with a long neck, whose peculiarity of figure had won
him the surnom of the Crane ; then there were Robert of
Seez ^ and Arnold of Le Mans, of whom little is recorded ;
and, last in seniority, the agreeable and philosophical Gilbert
Maminot, recently appointed to Lisieux,^ a prelate who diced,
hawked, and hunted by day, to the scandal of monks, and
only of monks, but who by night sat up to watch the circling
sweep of the constellations and trace the mysterious journeys
of the planetary stars, and on occasions such as the present
played his part with a dignity and a recollectedness suflficient
to modify the harsher judgment provoked by his devotion to
fashionable sports. Besides these there were a troop of
eminent churchmen from every part of Normandy, the most
distinguished laymen of the duchy and their wives, and
contingents of every order, from France, from Brittany, from
Maine, from England, who either swelled the innumerous
crowd of spectators "or helped to prolong the varied and
festive procession that made the circuit of the monastery
before entering upon the greater solemnities of the day.
One great personage was absent, it is true ; the Conqueror

' The Marquis William had received the habit of St. Benedict on his death-
bed. He must have died in the year 1074, not many months after the removal of
the community to their new convent. His remains were still in the cloister
toward the close of the last century, and I have a shrewd guess as to their present
resting-place.

^ Appointed in Bayeux in 1049.

3 Appointed to Evreux in or about 1069.

* Appointed to Seez in 1070. ^ Appointed to Lisieux in 1077.

THE SPECTATORS. 185

was unable to assist at a ceremony which attracted all his
duchy, and Gilbert Crispin quaintly but not unwisely
suggests that Heaven might have been jealous had the
monarch shared its joy, meaning to say that since Le Bee
was not a ducal foundation, and since its monasterium had
been slowly and laboriously constructed from the hardly won
savings of the pauperes Christie the presence of the sovereign
would have been but inharmoniously in keeping with the
consummation of an enterprise which the King of kings had
manifestly taken under His own special protection. Gilbert
Crispin's ideas of propriety were no doubt shared by the
prince himself, who sent his apologies for not appearing, and
by his queen, who was only present by the * suitable largess
of her bounty.'

The very elements favoured the great event ; not a
wreath of mist sullied the calm transparency of the soft
October sky, and round about the grassy precinct of the
fresh, hard-cut architectural pile the variegated and melan-
choly splendour of the forest foliage gleamed with the
peculiar iridescence so familiar to the admirers of our
autumnal landscapes. Long before the ceremonies began
that dewy sward had been invaded by a multitude whose
numbers' and whose untutored enthusiasm can only be
appreciated by such of us as have witnessed like festive
celebrations in provinces on the Continent where ancient
manners flourish, and where popular taste, popular sentiment,
and popular fervour are by nothing so much gratified as by
those ecclesiastical functions in which the lowest prove as
keen an interest, and take as unquestioned a share, as the

* We are informed that when Urban II. in 1096 consecrated a church at
Anjou, it seemed as if the fulness of the world {amplitudo orbis) had flown into the
place. The crowd which some few years later assembled to witness the conse-
cration of the new cathedral at Laon was estimated at two hundred thousand
persons — an exaggeration perhaps, but, if so, an unconscious one. It is only
those who have lived and moved outside our island that can form a just idea of
these immense concourses,

i86 OUTSIDE THE CHURCH.

very highest. But when the procession at last emerged from
the cloister, and all that Le Bee and all that ecclesiastical
Normandy could boast of gravity and pomp, of dignity and
splendour, came slowly into view, the half-barbarous and
astonished crowd vented their delight, their wonder, and their
devotion in murmurs that swelled anon into a tumultuous
hubbub and drowned even the trained full-throated voices of
the monks of Le Bee and their numerous brethren of the
cowl. The wonder was that none of those good people
were trampled to death, and that their graceless though
not irreverent zeal did not throw processional chant and
processional sequence alike into irremediable confusion.
When, however, they perceived that the long double file of
religious were already entering the house of prayer by its
great western doorway, their enthusiasm escaped all bounds,
and crosiered abbots ^ and mitred bishops ^ were so jostled
and crushed that when they at last forced their way into the
church they were not more thankful than surprised to have
done so with bones unbroken. But no sooner had the
Archbishop crossed the threshold than, entering at every
inlet and carrying all the doors off their hinges, the invading
torrent poured impetuously in, till positively it could pour no
longer, for the very sufficient reason that no physical effort
could find room for a single human being more in the stifled
and stifling mass of men, women, and children that filled
nave, aisle, transept, chapel, and sanctuary of the Church
of Our Lady of Le Bee. Happily no one was injured.

Of the altars awaiting consecration after the performance
of the other prescribed ceremonies the Archbishop of
Canterbury ascended the principal, one being assigned to

' These had no mitres, unless indeed the Abbot of St. Augustine's, Canter-
bury, was one of them. He was as yet the only mitred abbot in Christendom, in
virtue of a privilege granted by Alexander II. Even at Cluny the mitre was not
worn until 1088,

2 As to the proper dress for a bishop at the consecration of a church, there is
a curious letter extant from Lanfranc to Archbishop John of Rouen (Ep. 13).

INSIDE THE CHURCH. 187

each of the inferior prelates, so that the quaint and august,
because exceedingly ancient, rites of the consecratio altaris
were begun simultaneously in six several parts of the
building.^ But those rites are so numerous, so varied, and
so intricate that each of the officiants, unable to proceed
pari 'passu with any of the rest, was fain to resign himself to
the vociferous fervour of those round about him, of monks
and clergymen gathered from all quarters and mutually
unknown, of laymen of rank who knew the psalter and its
chant less or more imperfectly, and of people of the baser
sort, whose untutored throats were all that was required to
improve the fierce rivalry of six distinct and independent
groups of singers into such a discordant and afflictive chaos
of keys, notes, tones, and cadences as we may well believe had
never yet been known in the history of mankind. Nay,
more : inasmuch as each group — such was their anxiety to
hear their own song and not those of the other five which
were distributed beneath the echoing roofs — sang with ever-
growing energy, the constituent members of each were not
long in falling, out among themselves, and at last * scarcely
one of the singing crowd could hear his own voice,' for the
more mercurial amongst them, in sheer ecstasy of physical
excitement and devotional rage, sang they cared not what
so long only as they sang, in utter disregard of that particular
part of the function which their efforts might have been
supposed to elucidate. The monks of Le Bee, indeed, to
whom the church belonged, who had carefully practised
their chant, and whose souls were penetrated with a joy that
claims all our sympathy, seem to have been distributed about
the several altars, with the design of maintaining vocal un-

1 As the church had been in use since the autumn of 1073, there must
already have been several consecrated altars in it. I imagine that three altars
had been in use from the first, so that the full number vpas nine. A tenth was,
I believe, added some fifteen or sixteen years later, in honour of St. Nicholas, in
a chapel specially built in his honour and surmounted by a tovi^er. The chapel,
that is to say, occupied the ground floor of the Tower of St. Nicholas.

i88 THE FEAST,

animity; but they were no match for their uncontrollable
guests and, worsted in a too unequal contest, vented their
overcharged hearts in silent showers of emotion, so that
* whilst others sang aloud with the voice of joy and gladness
they, fixing their whole hearts' intent upon the Lord, poured
forth to Him, and only to Him, the lone melody of their
tears.'

The enthusiasm only abated when the miscellaneous
crowd of earls and knights and noble dames, of monks and
villeins, of children and their shrill mothers, of canons and
hedgerow priests, left the church. But the day's work was not
yet ended ; indeed, the most trying part of it for Herlwin.
who had been dangerously ill a week before, and had by
sheer nervous effort risen to the exertions of the morning,
were yet to begin. Not only in the refectory, but in every
available room of the convent, in outlying tenements, in
distant farms, at Bonneville and at Le Pare, tables had been
set and furnished for all who might choose to partake of the
abbot's hospitality. Those whose rank entitled them to
more pretentious cheer than the rest vowed — doubtless in
obedience to the quaint etiquette of the time — that their host
had almost overdone his preparations for them ; and for many
a long day was it said that never had Easter dinner or
wedding feast equalled the profusion of Herlwin's bounty
on that memorable occasion. From morning till deep night
did relay after relay of religious, some known to a few, some
unknown by all, sit down at the groaning boards ; from
morning till deep night did the indefatigable host with the
exigent refinement of his nature busy himself for the comfort
of each and all. ' How are they getting on V 'What do they
say to it all .? ' * Is there enough for them } * Such were his
questions of the servants, who had a busy time of it indeed
' and could not stay for a moment in one place.' The
answers to the last of these questions was always the same ;
there was still enough, enough and to spare. Then would

THE FAREWELL OF PRIMATE AND ABBOT. 189

the old man say to himself, 'Quid retribuam Domino pro
omnibus quae retribuit mihi ? ' ' What shall I render to the
Lord ? What shall I render to the Lord ? ' * And so saying
he rendered in thanksgiving all he had to give — that is to
say, tears, the sacrifice of tears, the offering of a thankful
heart to God for all His benefits.'

The morrow was a day of needful repose for the com-
munity, and chiefly for Herlwin. But what was the surprise
of all when on the Wednesday morning the Archbishop
announced his intention of taking leave of them ! * They all
burst into tears, and there was no consoling the little ones ;
he therefore hurried off as quickly as possible, hoping their
sobs might cease at least when he was well out of sight.'

Abbot Herlwin gathered up strength and courage to
accompany his friend for some seven or eight miles of his
journey.^ It was a pensive and sacred hour — the last hour
of mortal intercourse between those two men, men widely
different in race, and wider still in their early opportunities
for mental culture ; the one bred for the schools, the other
made in camps, but heroes both of them, and both most truly
wise ; since each had in the flower of his manhood relinquished
at a call from Heaven what was to him the proudest realisa-
tion of youthful dream. And ever since that chill morning
when the two men, the one in poverty and the other in
nakedness, were so strangely thrown together in their sublime
endeavours to live to Him * who pleased not Himself,' each
had learnt to value the other at his proper worth. But
although, after so many years of sacred attachment, their last
hour was a sad, it was a happy one. The heart of each
swelled to think that the last ' Good-bye ' would be presently
said ; but all of natural emotion that it proved was tranquil-
lised and hallowed by the assurance of a not distant reunion,
never to be interrupted. So that when the moment came to
say it, each did his part, if with choking voice, yet with eyes

' Duo milliaria.

I90 'NUNC DIMITTIS:

heroically mastered ; and each, when anon he turned to cast
a long last lingering look at his friend, comported himself as
those do who sorrow, but who sorrow not without hope.

Thus soothed and fortified, Herlwin pursued his way
home. He reached the margin of the valley, and looking
down upon his monastery, scanned its massive walls, its long-
drawn roofs, its solemn tower, proofs and records all of them
of Lanfranc's genius, Lanfranc's generosity, Lanfranc's love
for his paupercula mater ; ^ and, round about, the turfy lawn,
torn and trampled by the crowd of the previous Monday.
What severance from his friend of friends could not do,
thankfulness to the Power that had so beneficently watched
his life now did. He hurried home and sought his room,
and, sinking into a chair, gave vent to all the cataracts of his
soul, crying through his tears, * Nunc dimittis servum tuum,
Domine, in pace ; quia viderunt oculi mei. Yes, mine eyes
have seen what I earnestly craved and ever prayed of Thee
that I might see before I died. Thou hast fulfilled my
desire ; now will Thy servant go to Thee whenever it shall
please Thee.'

* Then he kept silence, but the flood of tears he could by
no means restrain; until the brother that spoke with him,
unable to bear it any longer, was fain to introduce some other
topic'

The good brother changed the subject. Let us follow his
example.

To revert, then, to the history of the exemplum meditandi
de ratione fidei. Such evidence as we possess justifies the
conjecture that Anselm would gladly have submitted the work
to Lanfranc's inspection ; or, rather, since the prelate's vision
was impaired by age, would gladly have read it to him, while
he was a guest at Le Bee ; but that the abrupt termination

^ I borrow this phrase from the Lire codex, which says of him, *Non est
immemor factus suae pauperculas matris, sed quoad vixit earn sustentavit, aluit et
honoravit vehementer. '

THE ESSAY SENT TO LANFRANC. 191

of the visit made this impossible. He therefore sent the
treatise after him to Canterbury, accompanied by a letter,
in which, asking him to decide its fate, he said : —

* I have prefixed no title to it ; for, to say the truth, I
have not thought it worthy of being dignified with a name
of its own. So, then, if you judge it well that I should
have written what I have written, whilst approving it pray
give it a name and hand it on to Dom Maurice. . . . But
if it cannot bear your examination, do not return me the
copy I send you, neither give it to him, but commit it to
one or other of the four elements, and destroy it either by
burying (in earth), sinking (in water), burning (by fire), or
scattering wide (in air). But, whatever your judgment may
be pleased to decide, I beg you to apprise me of it, that the
copy I have kept may meet with precisely the same fate as
that which I have sent you,' &c.^

At the same time he wrote a letter to Maurice, and a
letter to the younger Lanfranc, who had now been some
little time at Canterbury, recalled thither, as it would appear,
on account of his health. In the former he sends his remem-
brances to two young gentlemen, secular clergymen, from
Caen, Dom Vitalis and Dom Roger ; and in the latter to a
Dom Guido, a friend of the Archbishop's nephew, and kins-
man, it may be, of the other Guido, young Lanfranc's old
companion in travel and in religious profession.^ In which
case this second Guido was an Italian, and may have come
from Italy in the train of the Archbishop in the summer of
the current year, 1077. ^s to Vitalis and Roger, it is easy to
surmise what had taken them to Canterbury. They must
have gone there either to seek admission into Lanfranc's
monastery of Christ Church, or else to ask his advice in the
choice of a religious home. There seems to have been a

» Ep. i. 63. 2 £pp^ I 65^ 66^

192 ANSELM'S SYMPATHY FOR YOUNG MEN.

curious interchange of postulants and of professed monks
between Le Bee and Caen from 1063 to 1070, and subse-
quently to 1070 between Le Bee and Canterbury ; for when
Lanfranc left Le Bee for his new monastery he took three at
least of its monks with him, and perhaps even regarded St.
Stephen's Abbey as a colony from his own old home ; and we
certainly know of one — doubtless there were more — whom he
sent thence to Le Bee. And whereas at Canterbury Prior
Henry, Dom Herlwin, and Dom Maurice were alumni of Le
Bee, Le Bee had received proteges of Lanfranc's in the second
Osbern, in young Lanfranc, and in the elder Guido. There
were two reasons for this transference of quite young men to
the Norman house, and of others already formed thence to
the English. The new civilisation had gained an ascendency
at Le Bee which was denied to it at Canterbury, and Anselm
was in nothing more successful than in the education of young
men at the period of their adolescence. There was a rationa-
bilitas, a reflectiveness, a craving for intellectual sympathy,
or at least for intellectual response, in his nature, which
seems to have rendered him happier in his treatment of young
men than in that of children ; a craving too for the fidelity
and depth and steadfastness of affection which we seek in
vain from wayward boyhood. He was not fond of teaching
mere lads, but with the hearts of young men, struggling
against self and ambitious of sanctity, his own ever beat in
unison. He used to compare adolescence and early man-
hood to wax when in its fittest state for receiving an impres-
sion. * If the wax is too soft, or if it is not soft enough, it
reproduces in a very unsatisfactory and imperfect manner the
device engraved on the seal ; but judiciously choose a moment
at which its condition is blended both of soft and hard, press
your seal upon it then, and it receives the device in all its
fulness of form and sharpness of outline. So is it with the
stages of human life. Take a man who has spent all his time
from infancy on to gloomy old age in the business of this

DOM ROGER. 193

vain world, a man who savours of earthly things and is
thoroughly set to an earthly hardness ; treat with him of
spiritual things, talk to him about the exquisite charms of
Divine contemplation, try to teach him to penetrate heavenly
mysteries ; and you will soon find that, so far from penetrating
them, he cannot even see what you set before him. And no
wonder ; your wax is set ; the man has not spent his time
on this sort of thing ; he has been schooled in other pursuits
entirely. On the other hand ; take a mere boy, unformed in
age and intellect, and unable to distinguish between right and
wrong ; discourse as you will about this sort of thing, he will
not understand you ; no, not even you. And for a good
reason. The wax is too soft ; it runs : it cannot possibly take
the engraving on the seal. Whereas a young man holds the
middle place between the two, being happily blended of
hardness and softness. Undertake to teach him, and you
will be able to mould him as you wish. Such is my experi-
ence ; hence my peculiar interest in young men, and my care
to root up all the seeds of evil in them ; that, being in time
adequately instructed in the practices of Christian virtue,
they may be transformed to the model of spiritual maturity.'
But, however, Vitalis and Guido soon found their way
from Canterbury to Le Bee, whilst Roger remained behind.
But Anselm could neither understand nor bear the delay,
for, Herlwin being by this time helpless from palsy, the
responsibility and the joy of alluring the choicer spirits of his
acquaintance from the world to the cloister, was henceforth to
be his own. He therefore addressed the following letter to his
young friend ; he was soon to write many such to others : —

' To his beloved, desired, hoped for, and expected Roger,
the brother Anselm whom he loves : what is the more
pleasing choice to God, and the more conducive to his own
good, may he prudently seek and perseveringly adhere to,
and happily set in practice.
VOL. I. O

194 THE WORLD AND THE CLOISTER.

*That which we have confided to the holy design of
God alone I dare not decide by my own will. Still, I may
%\vt. expression to my desire. I am fretted by your
delay, and tormented by my long-protracted expectation
of you. My heart cannot, will not forget what, I will
not say you certainly promised, but what you certainly
foretold me — that I might look forward to your returning
and remaining here. And certainly what you said was
said in all seriousness. Truly may I say that my eyes
have failed for your word, saying, When will you comfort
me t Oh, let me not be deceived, for I have hoped in
you ; let me not be put to shame, for I have expected
you ; let not those be astonished nor let those say whom
you have sent as the firstfruits of your ingathering and
the pledge of your coming, let them not say, Why
have you urged others to a home whither you have dis-
dained either to lead the way or to follow.? Especially
when they came here all the more gladly and have been
all the more gladly received by us in the hope of your
soon following them. Oh, may the Lord direct your way
in His sight ! oh, may He direct your heart, and so give
you according to your own heart and confirm all your
counsels ! '

Things have so much altered in the world, in some
respects for the better, in some for the worse, that it is
doubtless much more difficult to us than it was to Anselm's
contemporaries to place ourselves precisely at his point de
vue, and appreciate an appeal like this at its true worth ; but
of the sincerity and fervour of the appeal there cannot be a
shadow of a doubt, and that sincerity and that fervour are
only to be measured by Anselm's estimate of the trans-
cendent merit of the true monastic life. If, however, we
cannot learn or cannot realise that estimate, we may at any
rate recall the fact that purity of morals was almost unknown

PUBLICATION OF THE ' MONOLOGION: 195

outside the cloister ; and the picture drawn by this very
Roger of Caen in his ' Carmen de Contemptu Mundi ' of
the precariousness of domestic virtue is simply frightful.
Anselm's appeal was not unheeded. The Roger whose name
stands immediately after Guido's ' is that of the poet, Roger
of Caen.

But enough to have noted these names. For the opuscii-
lum has not been committed to the flames, or to earth, or to
water, or to air. On the contrary, the Archbishop of Can-
terbury has written to the Prior about it ; and the latter, after
making a few, perhaps unimportant, alterations in it, has sent
a fresh copy to Canterbury, accompanied by a letter to his
singular is cons ilia ritis.

Before the summer of 1078 the ' Exemplum Meditandi de
Ratione Fidei ' was a published work ; but it bore no name,
and may be almost said to have borne no title.^ Several
years were to elapse before it should be known first as the

* Soliloquium de Ratione Fidei,' and shortly afterwards as the

* Monologion of Abbot Anselm,' or more simply still 'Anselm's
Monologion.' ^

Whilst he was prosecuting the speculations embodied in
this work, it had seemed to him that it might be possible to
discover a short and simple argument, which should supersede
the Platonic mode of proof therein adopted, and which, while
establishing the eternity, the omnipotence, the omnipresence,
the goodness of God, and the rest, should show that He is
not endowed with these attributes as though participator of
qualities exterior to Himself, but that they all have their
absolute existence in Him, and that in Him they are not

' The name of Vitalis is the hundred and twenty-ninth ; then comes a
Bernard, then Guide, then Roger of Caen. Only four other professions were
made before Herlwin's death in the August of 1078.

^ I have had the happiness of seeing, handling, and collating a copy of this;>
the first edition of the work. Its only title is Exemplum Meditandi de Ratione
Fidei.

* That is to say, Monologion^ libey Anselvn. Thus is the Jumieges copy entitled.

o 2

196 BRAIN WORK

many, but one perfection. An original and bold idea, hitherto
without parallel in the history of the human mind, and one
which, as he used to say, reduced him to great straits (* quae
res, sicut ipse referebat, magnam sibi peperit difficultatem ') ;
for his tension of thought prevented him from taking either
food, drink, or sleep, and, what was more distressing, dis-
tracted and worried him at matins and the other offices.
Food, drink, and sleep, indeed, were of slight importance to
him ; what alarmed him was that his quest of an argument
in proof of the existence of the Supreme Being should mar
the homage he paid Him. But the thing he sought eluded
all his efforts ; he seemed to be employed in an utterly
hopeless enterprise, and he at last made up his mind to
banish an idea which he suspected must be a temptation
from the enemy of souls. But the more he laboured to get
rid of the prepossession, the more rudely did it come back
to him ; ^ the more he struggled to keep it aloof, the more
importunately did it assail him ; and his labouring and jaded
brain had no repose until one night at matins,'^ when, in the
very agony of his effort to ward it off and follow the office
undisturbed, suddenly the light broke in upon him ; the argu-
ment he had sought displayed itself clear and bright to his
mental vision, 'and his inmost soul was deluged with un-
speakable joy and gladness.' As he stood in his stall in the
sombre gloom of the scarcely illuminated choir, his large
white hood drawn over his head, none observed his emotion,
or saw the tears that rolled down his thin ethereal face, or
dreamed that he, their prior, had descried and grasped a
proof of the existence of God which should henceforth
throughout all time compel the wonder and admiration of
our race.

' Magis ac tnagis is Eadmer's phrase in the Vita and his own in the proem to
the Proslogion.

' '^ Ititer nocturnas vigilias.^ Not 'inihe night watches' (Dean Church), but
during the office of matins, which comprised the nocturnce vigili<2.

A NEW ARGUMENT DISCOVERED. 197

His ecstasy was scarcely over when it occurred to him
that others might be gratified to share the discovery ; and as
morning brightened up the cloister he traced upon his tablets *
an argument of which this is a summary : The fool in saying
there is no God shows himself a fool ; for God is that than
which a greater cannot be conceived ; and since existence,
unbeginning, unending, absolute existence, is a necessary
factor in the idea of a being than which a greater cannot
be conceived, God necessarily is.

The argument, not sketched thus in outline, but deduced
and developed much as we now see it in the second, third,
and fourth chapters of the * Proslogion,' having been com-
mitted to the tablets, Anselm handed these to one of the
community with instructions to take strict care of them.
After some days he called for them, but they were not to
be found ; whereupon on fresh tablets he wrote out a second
sketch, and entrusted the precious charge to the same
guardian as before, but with special directions for more care-
ful custody. The zealous and appreciative brother stowed
them away in as safe a part as might be of his bed : a monk's
bed was a sacred receptacle, to which only the prior and him-
self had access. But what was his dismay on finding them
next day scattered about the floor of the dormitory, and
their coating of wax dispersed in innumerable fragments all

^ The tracing upon tablets was termed dictatio. The difference between dic-
tare and scriptitare was the difference between a foul and a fair copy ; and it was
usual to make the former on tablets, the latter on parchment. Thus, when Osbern,
the intrusive Abbot of Evroul (Orderic, ii. 96), had resolved to send to the Pope
and ask his blessing, he bade Witmund, a clever monk, write on tablets a rough
copy of a respectful letter to Alexander II. {supplices litteras dictare), which a young
man named Bernard, a nobilis antiquarius, was to copy out carefully on parch-
ment {diligenter scriptitare). Thus Lanfranc, excusing himself to a friend for the
infrequency of his letters, says, * tot impedimentis subjicio, tot animi rancores
.... sustineo, tot calamitates .... conjicio, ut perraro dictandi seu scribendi
facultas detur ' (Ep. 1 6) ; and St. Anselm, writing to his uncles, makes dictatio
the office of the stylus, not the calamus. ' Utinam in legendo epistolam meam
sentiant avunculi mei quem affectum in dictando eam testantur oculi mei ; velociter
enim fuit in ipso initio animus meus lacrymas exprimere quam stylus meus litteras
imprimere' {Ep. i. 18).

198 PUBLICATION OF THE ' PROSLOGION:

over the room ! He picked up the broken framework, collected
the bits of wax, and carried the forlorn wreck to Anselm,
who put them together as an antiquary might the debris of a
shattered epitaph in the catacombs, and succeeded, though
barely succeeded, in redintegrating their legend. It was now
high time to take more jealous precaution, for a little care-
lessness might doom his few sentences to oblivion, * and in
the name of the Lord, he ordered them to be transferred to
parchment. Eadmer speaks with enthusiasm of the little
scroll {parvulum volumen),^ modest in compass, but invaluable
in its weight of thought and subtilty of speculative effort.
Unquestionably a new chapter was opened in the history of
human thought when the contents of that little scroll were
first made known. It bore no name, and carried the simple
but sublime inscription ' Fides quaerens Intellectum.' Several
years were to elapse before, in obedience to legatine authority,
he was to prefix his name to it, entitling it 'Anselm's' or

* Abbot Anselm's Alloquium de Ratione Fidei.' At a shortly
subsequent date he designated it more briefly * Anselm's ' or

* Abbot Anselm's Proslogion.' ^

* A scroll, not a leaved book. Thus Orderic (ii. 100) calls a rotulus volu-
men. A certain Abbot of St. Evroul had a very long scroll on which he inscribed
the names of his monks, and lower down the names of their deceased fathers,
mothers,, brothers, and sisters. It was kept near the altar, where it was custom-
ary to say, ' Animas famulorum famularumque tuarum quorum nomina ante
sanctum altare tuum scripta ad esse videntur electorum tuorum jungere digneris
consortio.' But once a year this list of names, which he now calls volumen, was
unrolled {dissolutum) and spread across the altar {super altare palam expanditur).
I conclude, therefore, that the proper meaning of volumen had not been lost in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and that we must eschew the faithless fidelity
that would translate /arz/«/«w volumen 'modest volume.' The Proslogion was
first of all written on a scroll of parchment. Is that scroll to be found ? Or can
Anselm in his humility have destroyed it ? Or has it perished otherwise ?

2 We have two letters to Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons, the latter of which
gives some information about the titles. In the first he says, ' Quod in titulo
opusculorum nostrorum nomini nostro addidi nomen abbatis, non ideo feci ut
personam monstrarem honoratiorem, sed ut nominis excluderem sequivoca-
tionem. ' In the second he says, ' Precor ut . . . . illud quod in ipsis titulis
positum est, scilicet de ratione fidei velut superabundans recidentes, ilium quem
Monoloquium nominavi Monologion vocetis ; et alterum non Alloquium sed Proslo-

THE LIBELLUS AND THE VO LUMEN. 199

These two essays, though not the earliest composed, were
the earliest published of his works. As philosophical treatises
they are unquestionably his most remarkable ; and the author
of the only authentic portrait of him which I know has
happily expressed the contemporary estimate of their value.
On either side of the saint there stands a disciple ; one holds
a book, the other a scroll. The book is the libellus once
timidly sent across the strait to Lanfranc ; the scroll is the
memorable volumen on which had been transcribed from
broken fragments of wax the first a priori argument in proof
of the existence of the Supreme Being which human genius
had as yet constructed.

gion tituletis ; et secundum titulorum correctionem finem prsefatiunculae minoris
libelli qu3e de eisdem titulis loquitur emendetis' {Epp. ii. 1 1, 17). Archbishop
Hugh was elevated to the see of Lyons in 1085.

The Jumieges copy is entitled Proslogion, liber Anselmi. I have also found
a copy entitled Alloquium, and one in which survives the first designation, Fides
qucerens Intellectum.

200

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LAST DAYS OF ABBOT HERLWIN.

At Cluny, in the middle of the floor of the infirmary, there
was an outlined space reserved for a very pathetic purpose.
It was there that the monks of Cluny, each in his turn, died.
When a monk was seen to be in his agony this space was
covered with carpet of sackcloth, on which were sprinkled
ashes in the form of a cross, and the sufferer, lifted from his
bed by the nurses, and laid thus on sackcloth and ashes,
awaited his end. ' How else should a Christian die,' asked
St. Martin, ' but in sackcloth and ashes .? ' Meanwhile the
community flew with all haste to the infirmary — only in case
of fire or death might a Cluniac monk quicken his step from
a sober walk — gathered round the dying man, and sang
psalms and litanies in his aid till he expired. When St.
Odilo was near his end he fell back in his bed insensible ; the
brethren caught him in their arms, the sackcloth and ashes
were hastily spread, and, thought to be even now expiring, he
was laid upon them. But he recovered consciousness, and
asked where he was. * My lord, you are on the sackcloth
and ashes,' said Brother Bernard. * Thanks be to God,' was
the reply. 'Are the children here, and all the brethren V They
were all present, he was told. * Whereupon noting the cross
that stood at his feet facing him, he fixed his eyes on it,
moving his lips to say a last silent prayer, and then without
any convulsion closed his eyes and was at rest.' *

And the Carthusian order, whose origin dates from the

' Migne, cxlii. 912.

SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 201

close of the eleventh century, perpetuated this usage of death
upon the floor, but seem with characteristic severity to have
dispensed with the sackcloth. * We laid bare the pavement,'
says the biographer of our own St. Hugh of Lincoln, * and
sprinkled blest ashes on it in the form of a cross. He, too,
blessed the ashes, and then bowed down his head and prayed
in silence. And we, lest on his last day he should not hear
divine service sung through to its end, began compline. We
sang as far as the place of the psalm " He shall cry unto Me,
and I will hear him : I am with him in trouble ; I will deliver
him, and will glorify him," when he made us a sign, and we
laid him down upon the ashes. But we continued singing,
only a little faster than before ; and he, with a face all peace,
serenest peace, began to breathe more slowly, until, as the
choir were beginning the canticle of Simeon, he yielded his
spirit into the hand of his Creator.' '

Nor was it religious orders only who observed the custom
of lifting the dying from their bed and laying them on the
ground. Waso, a secular Bishop of Liege in the middle of
the eleventh century, when near his end was importuned by
the surrounders to let them lift him from his bed, * as is always
done to a dying Christian.' * Do not weary yourselves in
vain,' he replied ; * I shall depart to-morrow. To-morrow in
God's name help me.' They waited till the morrow.^

Godehard, a Bishop of Hildesheim in the tenth century,
had a servant who fell ill when the prelate was himself near
his end. The poor young man was sent home, whither a
message followed him from the Bishop, * Put your trust in the
Lord, my son, and be comforted, for the time draws near,
and you and I will go home together to the land of eternal
joy.' A few nights after, during the very early hours after
midnight, the Bishop died, and the bells were set tolling. The
lad awoke and asked the meaning of this. 'They are ringing

> Migne, cliii, 1104. * Ibid, cxlii. 75i.

202 THE LAP OF EARTH.

for matins/ said his mother with pious mendacity. ' Why do
you deceive me ?' he cried ; * why do you keep back the truth ?
My dear master is going to heaven, but alas ! alas ! he forgets
me and leaves me here! Arise and lift up your hands and
hearts, and commend his dear soul to the mercy of God, and
entreat him to think of me.' And then he raised his eyes in
longing heavenward, and cried, ' O holy prelate and kind
father, by Him to whom you go I pray you have a care for me ;
leave me not here behind, for often have you promised me
that I should go home with you.' His friends, stupefied with
sorrow, obeyed the poor lad's behest, and then, turning their
eyes towards him, saw that the vital spark had fled. They
lifted him from his lowly pallet and laid him on the floor, and
stanched their tears, happy to know that he had gained his
heart's desire.^

But not only in episcopal palaces, in religious houses, and
under the smoky rafters of poor men's cottages was this
traditional use observed ; those even who died under no other
covering than the blue sky were consigned in their last
moments to the lap of earth. St. Emmeram, the Apostle of
Bavaria, had been hacked almost to death by order of a pagan
tyrant south of the Danube ; when, deprived of feet, of hands,
of ears, of eyes, of tongue even, his disciples carried him off"
from the scene of torture in a waggon, hoping that he might
die at Ascheim ; but ere they could reach the place he cried
to them with what voice he could to let them know that his
hour was come. They were crossing a meadow three miles
from Ascheim. They immediately lifted him from the waggon
and laid him on the grass, where he expired.^

And the like had recently happened in the summer of
1077, not many miles from Le Bee. Hugh, Bishop of Lisieux,
grandson of Duke Richard I. and cousin of the late Duke
Robert, was at Pont I'Eveque when he received his sum-

• Migne, cxli, 1195. ^ Ibid. cxli. 982.

THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 203

mons to depart hence ; but, wishing to die under the shadow
of his own cathedral, which he had built in great part and
finished during his pontificate, caused himself to be carried
thitherward in a litter. He made the journey attended by a
convoy of clerks and distinguished laymen, but was seized
with the pains of death ere he could reach Lisieux. His
bearers carried him from the road to a grassy sward ^ hard
by, lifted him from the litter, and laid him on the turf, where
he passed away under the warm splendour of a July sky.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the 25th of
October, 1077, had hastened his departure from his old home,
it was evident that the excitement consequent on the conse-
cration of the church was too much for his friend the abbot.
Herlwin had been seriously, even dangerously, ill a week
before the ceremony, and only rose equal to the emergency
of the occasion by a strain upon his reserved strength, for
which he was now to pay dearly. The paroxysm of tears to
which the old man gave way, on returning home after he had
set forth the Archbishop on his journey, was soon followed by
symptoms of paralysis. The limbs lost all their powers, ' and
long before the anniversary of the consecration his prayer was
granted him,' On Monday, the 20th of August, 1078, he took
to his bed ; he was convinced that his end was near, and said
so. The shadow of death fell like a pall upon the house ; its
inmates moved about like men stupefied ; their hearts were
breaking ; * they could not eat, and sleep forsook their eyelids.*

On Wednesday, the 22nd, the abbot asked for the ab-
solution and the other consolations of religion accorded to
the dying.

His wish was communicated to the brethren in chapter ;
whereupon the prior, the father sacristan, and four lay brothers
retired to the church, and returned after a few minutes in the

' A cross was erected on the spot where he died. M. le Prevost says
(O. V. ii. 309), * On pense que cette croix devait etre placeedans le lieu qui porte
aujourd'hui le nom de Pre-l'Eveque.'

204 THE LAST SACRAMENTS.

following order : first, a lay brother with the holy water,
then another carrying the cross, then two more with candles,
behind them the father sacristan with the oleum infirmorum,
and last of all Anselm, in alb and stole, carrying the maniple
in the book. As they passed into the vestibule before the
chapter-house the whole community rose and followed them
to the sick man's room, singing the seven penitential psalms.
But in truth theirs was very sorry singing, and the prayers
that followed as they stood round about the bed of their
dying father could scarcely be heard for the sobs that rose
from many an overfraught heart. When the paralysed
sufferer tried to say the Confiteor he could not articulate the
words, and burst into tears ; but the will was taken for the
deed, and by the time that the brethren had concluded their
own confession he had controlled himself sufficiently to say
the words of the absolution. Then one by one the flock he
had gathered round him — old men, young men, children —
passed by his bedside ; each gave him the sacred kiss, each
received his blessing. He would gladly have addressed them
all when this was done, but he had strength left for nothing
more than to beg their prayers and receive extreme unction.

The three days and three nights that followed were days
and nights of sorrow such as has seldom been surpassed. The
time was spent in prayers and uncontrollable distress, and
when the brethren said office it was hard work to get through
a psalm without breaking down, for if one of them looked
another in the face the forlorn expression that he encountered
was only too true an index of his own woe.

During this interval the dying man had an indefatigable
attendant in Abbot Roger, who had left his own charge at
Lessay, so as to be near his old friend at such a time. Roger
had lived with him in the early days at Bonneville forty years
ago, and none could supply the place peculiarly his own in
this emergency ; but, since when a monk was dying there must
be two in attendance, the second place was Anselm's. On the'

THE ' VIA TICUM MORIENTIS: 2o|

night of Friday, the 24th, Anselm slipped into the room, un-
observed, as he imagined, so as to be ready in case the end
approached, and sat himself down out of sight of Herlwin.
But, at the first stroke of the bell for matins, the patient roused
Abbot Roger, saying, to his surprise, ' Awake the prior, to say
matins with us.' At daylight he begged that all the canonical
hours of the day might be said in his hearing. This was done,
and then, as knowing that he must soon pass away, he begged
to be fortified with the most holy viaticum. Abbot Roger
hurried to the church, the community remaining in and about
the sick chamber ; but, strange to say, on opening the
eiicharistia ' he found that it was empty. His consternation
may easily be imagined, but much less easily his joy at the
wonderful providence which interposed in this extremity. It
happened that a priest who was saying mass for Herlwin was
already holding the Sacred Host in his hand, and on the point
of communicating. Abbot Roger approached him and craved
a portion,^ which he carried and gave to Herlwin. But the

' The eucharistia was the vessel in which the Sacred Mysteries were reserved,
and was probably suspended over the altar. The following from Matthew Paris
{H. M. s. a. 1 140) may interest some of my readers: — 'Rex interea Stephanus
missam in tanta solemnitate devotus audivit ; ubi ciim de more cereum regio
honore dignum Deo offerens manibus Alexandri episcopi imponeret subito con-
fractus est et exstinctus, quod regi contritionis signum fuit. Cecidit etiam super
altare eucharistia cum Corpore Christi, rupto filo, prassente episcopo, quod regi
ruinae prognosticum erat. '

"^ In this there was no material irregularity. What Abbot Roger received was
termed, at any rate in the diocese of Rouen, the viaticum morientis ; it is the
'■alia media pars' of the following rubric of the Roman Missal : ' [Sacerdos] accipit
Hostiam, frangit eam super calicem per medium .... ex parte quae in sinistra
remansit frangit particulam .... aliam mediam partem .... ponit super
patenam,' In case the dying person for whom mass was said desired to
communicate, this alia media pars via.% reserved and carried to him after the mass ;
if not, it was consumed during the mass. John of Avranches, Archbishop of
Rouen, who was still alive at the time of Herlwin's death, writes as follows in his
Liber de Ecclesiasticis Officiis : ' Tertiam [partem] viaticum si opus fuerit, in
patena usque ad finem missae reservet. . . . Tertiam quae remanet in altari
vocat Sancta Ecclesia viaticum morientis. ... Si autem opus non fuerit,
tertiam sacerdos, vel unus ministrorum accipiat.' I imagine, though I cannot feel
sure, that the following passages, one from the Life of St. Odo of Cluny, the other
from that of St. Gerald of Aurillac, allude to this custom : ' Cum venisset ad

2o6 'INTRA IN GAUDIUM DOMINI TUi:

sobs and tears of Herlwin's children were more than he could
bear, and by signs and scarcely articulated sounds he bade
them withdraw into the cloister as soon as he had communi-
cated. There they lingered through the woeful day, awaiting
his departure. Whenever the door of the room was seen to
open all flew towards it in nervous terror, fearing that he was
gone and expecting what they feared. Often in the course of
the day he would say to Abbot Roger, * What are they doing ?
Why do they delay } What is their reason, think you, for
not coming V who answered as we do at such times, not in the
speaker's sense, but in another, and said, ' What do you want }
They are in the cloister ; they are praying for you ; they will
come as soon as you wish.' Then the sufferer was silent for a
space, when again, and with greater agitation, he cried, * Why
do they delay } Why do they not come ?' But whom did he
mean } asked his friend ; who were they that delayed }
Herlwin's last word had been spoken ; the question had no
answer, as indeed it needed none.

The sun sank behind the hill, and the chilly mist was
already gathering in white folds all up the valley, before the
poor monks consented to retire into the church and sing
vespers. Whilst the last echoes from the choir were yet
floating through the gloom, the silence of the sick chamber
suddenly deepened. Another minute, and Herlwin was
stretched on ashes ; another, and there was great joy in
heaven !

The monastery had already been besieged by a miscel-
laneous crowd — such a crowd as in those days always came
together when an abbot of singular piety was known to be
dying ; and, as soon as the bells began to toll, tried, in their
impatience to wait till the necessary offices had been shown
to the dead, to force their way into the cloister. But this they

Sanctum Paulum missam celebravit eique Corpus etSanguinem Domini viaticum
tribuit ;' * Quidam de sacerdotibus missam concitus celebravit atque sacrosanctum
mysterium attulit.'

OBSEQUIES OF BLESSED HERLWIN.

207

were prevented from doing. When the body of Herlwin had
been duly composed in the apparamenta of his order and
abbatial dignity, a procession of sad and sober pomp passed
into the choir of the church, carrying their precious burden
and singing, * Subvenite, sancti Dei, accurrite, angeli Dei,
suscipientes animam ejus ; Offerentes earn in conspectu
Altissimi. Suscipiat eum Christus qui vocavit et in sinu
Abrahae angeli deducant : Offerentes.' The outer doors of
the church were now thrown open, and the sacred fabric was
soon filled with mourners, who, untutored in the expression
of their grief as of their gladness, kept noisy possession of it
night and day until the rites of entombment were concluded.^
In those rites several of the foremost churchmen and laymen
of the province participated, and to Gilbert, Bishop of Evreux,
was reserved the honour of consigning to a grave in the
middle of the chapter-house one in whom more conspicuously,
perhaps, than in any other of his time had been illustrated
the victory of a higher law over what the world held dearest.
Forty-four years had passed since Herlwin, the flower of
Norman chivalry, tore himself from the court of Gilbert
of Brionne, and he had been abbot for forty out of the forty-
four.

• Herlwin's death took place on what we should call August 25 ; but, since he
died at nightfall and after the conclusion of the offices of that day, the ecclesi-
astical morrow had commenced, and he was accordingly said to have died on the
26th. Thus St. Hugh of Cluny, who passed away on the evening of April 28,
1 109, is reputed to have died on the 29th ; and St. Hugh of Lincoln, who
expired on the evening of November 16, 1200, ' brevi intervallo post solis
occasum,' is commemorated on the 17th. Archbishop Theobald's death is thus
recorded by Robert of Torigni (s. a. 1 161) : ' Teobaldus archiepiscopus Cantu-
ariensis secunda feria Paschae obiit.' Monsieur Leopold Delisle observes upon
this (vol. i. p. 333), ' D'apres ce passage, Thibaud serait mort le lundi, 17 avril
1 161. Gervais de Cantorbery met cette mort au 18 avril 1161.' I feel sure
that there is no real discrepancy, and that the Archbishop must have died after
vespers. It is in precise analogy with this that Roger of Hoveden asserts St.
Hugh to have died on Thursday, November 16, although his anniversary was, as
he knew, kept on the 17th. There is an apparent discrepancy in the Life of
Leo IX. which may be explained by a knowledge of this fact. I refer to the date
xiii. Kal. Jun, in the account of the prelate's arrival at Toul, an event which took
place, according to modern computation, not on the 20th, but on the 19th of May.

?o8 BLESSED HERLWIN'S TOMB.

A stone of black marble marked his resting-place, ' a
memorial of his good deeds ; an enduring memorial for his
children, that when they meet to confer together on their
spiritual employments they may have presented to them the
thought of one who left courts to become a monk, forsook the
world to lead a supernatural life. ... I refrain from describ-
ing the grief of his bereaved children. ... If indeed he need
our prayers, may God grant eternal refreshment to his soul'

Providence has ever watched over the relics of his mor-
tality. The chapter-house was rebuilt in 1140, but he slept
on undisturbed ; and though storm and tempest have over
and over again laid low the adjoining church in ruin, and
angrier foes than they stripped its shrines of their costly
coverings and robbed them of their costlier contents, have
even swept its sacred vessels sacrilegiously away and stained
its altars with the blood of its defenceless owners ; although
once, when the danger was greatest, cloister and dormitory
were demolished, that what remained might be the better
protected with ramparts and trenches, yet the chapter-house
stood unhurt, and Herlwin still slept on undisturbed beneath
his tombstone of black marble. Year after year — unless
perchance when hindered by the disasters that followed
upon English invasions of Normandy under Edward III.,
Henry V., and Elizabeth —the monks of Le Bee kept
Herlvvin's anniversary, with sombre pomp at first, but as the
ages rolled on with gradually lessened signs of grief and
gradually heightened signs of joy, until in the seventeenth
century upon each twenty-sixth of August his tomb, which by
this time had been raised from the pavement and set on six
small pedestals of jasper, was covered with a carpet of cloth of
gold, all the altars of the church were decked as for a festival,
and, except that mass and office were the mass and office
for the dead, greater pomp was not displayed at Christmas, at
Easter, or at Pentecost than on the anniversary of Herlwin.
At last, in the year 1706, permission was obtained from the

THE REMAINS OF BLESSED HERLWIN. 209

Archbishop of Rouen to replace the ' Missa pro Defunctis '
by the ' Missa de SS. Trinitate.' Not satisfied with this, the
fathers obtained leave to expose their founder's remains to
the public veneration, and on July 7 in the year 1707, the
grave was opened and its sacred spoils brought to sight.
Corruption had spared the flesh of Herlwin.

In 1 7 14 the place of his reinterred remains was marked
by a stone of exquisite white marble in place of the black
one. What eventually became of it — for it escaped unhurt
at the dissolution of the abbey in 1792 — will perhaps never be
known ; but there is a story afloat that its last office was that
of a kitchen table in a neighbouring farmhouse, that it cracked
and was thrown away. It bore the following inscription : —

HIC JACET

PRIMUS HUJUSCE MONASTKRII CONDITOR ET ABBAS

VENERABILIS HERLUINUS

PRIMARI^ INTER NORMANNOS NOBILITATIS

PATRE ANSGOTO, MATRE HELOIDE, IN PAGO BRIONENSI NATUS

INTER ARMORUM STREPITUS SUMMA CUM LAUDE

INTER AUL^ ILLECEBRAS SUMmA CUM INTEGRITATE VERSATUS

ABJECTO MILITIiE SECULARIS PALUDAMENTO

CHRISTO DEINCEPS MILITATURUS

AB HERBERTO LEXOVIENSI EPISCOPO HABITU MONASTICO INDUITUR

ET UT CHRISTUM HABERET HEREDIT^^TEM

BONOEUM SUORUM CHRISTUM INSTITUIT HEREDEM

QUOS AGROS QUONDAM POSSEDERAT DIVES

HOS COLUIT PAUPER COLUIT ET JEJUNUS

UT CIBUS FIERET PAUPERUM

ET LABORANTIS SUDOR ET FAMES JEJUNANTIS

LABORES DIURNOS NOCTURNIS LEVABAT PRECIBUS

UT CUM VIRTUTUM STUDIIS STUDIA LITTERARUM CONJUNGERET

LITTERAS QUADRAGENARIUS DISCERE NON ERUBUIT

ET BECCENSI MONASTERIO LITTERARUM APERUIT GYMNASIUM

IN QUO PATERN^ PIETATIS ALUMNOS ET H^REDES

ECCLESIARUM PR^SULES CANDIDATOS

LANFRANCUM, ANSELMUM,

PLURIMOSQUE ALIOS SUI SIMILES DISCIPULOS

AD OMNE VIRTUTIS OFFICIUM SUIS INFORMABAT EXEMPLIS

ABBAS VIRTUTI SIMILLIMUS

QUI PLENUS OPERIBUS BONIS

MORTEM OBIIT VII. KAL. SEPT. AN. D. MLXXVIII.

^TAT. LXXXIIII.

PATRI DE SE OPTIME MERITO

iETERNUM HOC PIETATIS MONUMENTUM PP.

MONACHI BECCENSIS CONGREGATIONIS S. MAURX

ANNO D. MDCCXIV.

As to the chapter-house, it, like the church, was rased to
VOL. I. p

2IO TRANSLATION OF BLESSED HERLWIN.

the ground in 1 809 ; and to this day there is not a corner of
road, or street, or lane, or bridge within a mile of the tower
of the Abbey of Le Bee that has not some exquisite fragment
of carved mullion or of tracery for its curb stone. The very
pigsties of the peasantry are constructed out of fragments of
the church and chapter-house of blessed Herlwin's venerable
abbey.

And what of blessed Herlwin's ^ remains ? The story is a
short but a consolatory one.

In the August of 1792 the cure of the adjacent bourg, a
place which owes its existence and its prestige to Herlwin,
and after Herlwin to Anselm, obtained leave from the direc-
tory of the Department of the Eure to transport the body of
le bienheureux Hellouin from the recently deserted chapter-
house to another resting-place. On Saturday, October 13,
1792, the massive and enormously weighty coffin of stone in
which it reposed, and still reposes, was exhumed, and then
slowly and laboriously dragged to the parish church of Le
Bee Hellouin, where on the following day all that was mortal
of the founder of Le Bee was committed to a new grave.'^
May the kind angels that have during eight centuries defended
his ashes from insult prolong the same tutelary charge till
the day dawn when those ashes shall revive !

• This is his proper designation. He is never mentioned at Le Bee save as
le bienheuretix Hellouin.

2 An authentic account, hitherto unpublished, of this translation will be found
in the Appendix.

Book III.
ST. ANSELM ABBOT OF LE BEC

P 2

CHAPTER I.

ST. ANSELM ABBOT-ELECT OF LE BEC.

The monks of Le Bee, some hundred and twenty in
number,^ were seated round about their chapter house.^ The
prescribed psalms and prayers had just been recited, and they
now awaited with some eagerness, it may be with some mis-
giving, the issue of a conference, the prospect of which had
during several days contested with their tears for Herlwin
every spare moment of their time. Herlwin's grave lay there
in the middle of the chapter house ; his tenantless chair stood
at its upper or eastern end. Who was to fill it ?

It devolved upon Anselm, as prior, to open the delibera-
tions ; but he had no sooner spoken than one of the elder
monks rose and proposed that the prior himself be elected
abbot. Anselm, who was less surprised than disconcerted,
obeyed, nevertheless, with all promptitude the guide which
now, as ever, presided over his conduct, and without waste of
words set forth severally and clearly the various reasons which
constrained him to decline the honour.

And what were those reasons ? Eadmer observes an
exasperating silence, not only upon this particular, but upon
others, which we may think ourselves only too fortunate to
learn from alien or accidental sources. It is not Eadmer who
informs us that, after finally but most reluctantly yielding to

* Not more, I should say, than a hundred and twenty. A hundred and thirty-
seven names had been inscribed since the establishment of the house ; and by this
time there had certainly been thirteen removals, whether by death, preferment, or
emigration, and there may, of course, have been a few more.

* The chapter-house was pulled down some sixty years later to make way for a
larger one, which subsisted till the present century.

214 ANSELM REFUSES THE OFFERED DIGNITY,

his brethren's obstinacy, Anselm paid no homage to the
sovereign when he received seizin of the abbey ; or that he
refused to fill the abbot's chair, to take his place in the
abbot's stall, or even to touch the abbatial crosier, until he
had been consecrated ; or that the ceremony of consecration
was postponed for nearly six months after the election.^
These three facts had in Eadmer's day a significance which it
is scarcely possible to exaggerate, and on which, for that
very reason, this is not the moment for dwelling ; neverthe-
less, his passing them over as he does provides us with a
conjecture in explanation of his silence as to the motive of
Anselm's refusal to accept the abbatial dignity.

But let us follow Eadmer's account so far as it leads us.

The Prior's brethren in religion were sufficiently staggered
by the multiplicity and variety of his reasons, by the gravity
of some, if not all, of them, and by the ability and earnest-
ness with which they were enforced, to adjourn their delibera-
tions. But the penetrating eye of their victim soon perceived
that, if their judgment had faltered, their will gave no sign
of consenting, and forthwith he felt the first pangs of such
distress as he had never known before, and little dreamt that
he should ever know again. Chapters were held on several

' We are indebted for these facts to the following account printed by Dom
Bouquet from a MS. in the National Library at Paris : —

* Operse pretium puto mandare litteris his qui sunt et qui futuri sunt post nos
quo ordine et qua libertate Beccensis Ecclesia constat ab initio. . . .

' Hie vir (Herluinus) nobilis genere et moribus postquam decessit, monachi
illius, qui jam coeperant adolescere in bonitate et religione, prudentiam pastoris
amissi retinentes, cautis consiliis in omnibus se providentes, Deo se primum
commendaverunt, orationibus et jejuniis obnix^ pietatem illius postulantes ut
dignum pastorem eis proponere digneretur. . . .

* Electione peracta innotuerunt hoc scilicet suam electionem principi
Willelmo. . . .

' Princeps vero Willelmus cum honore et gaudio suscepit eum abbatiamque
ei tradidit donatione baculi pastoralis, sicut mos est illius regionis, nee ab eo
requisivit ullum hominium. . . . Sed AnselmusnuUo modo consensit ut baculum
portaret nee aliquid agere volebat nisi quantum in prioratu faciebat. Quapropter
monachi acceleraverunt negotium ut benediceretur. . . . Gislebertus Ebroicensis
episcopus peregit hoc opus in ipsa Beccensi ecclesia, . . . vii. Kal. Martias,
Dom Bouquet, Rcceuil. xiv. 270.

OBSTINACY OF THE ELECTORS. 215

successive days, the Prior evermore reiterating his reasons,
and his auditors opposing evermore to each argument, as it
dropped sententious and irrefutable from his lips, the proof
armour of an imperturbable obstinacy, until things came to a
dead lock ; as well they might, if one of Anselm's reasons
was what I believe it to have been. But of this presently.
The days came and went, but each day in its turn brought
additional intensity to a mental torture which Anselm's
monks, much as they might pity it, unanimously refused to
relieve ; chapters were convened and dissolved, but each
chapter left him in worse plight than it found him, till, pushed
to the very brink of despair in bootless quest of some way of
escape, he was at last compelled to avow to himself that
there remained but one desperate alternative ; still there was
one. The electors were deaf to reason ; might it not be
possible that they would listen to persuasion ?

But the electors had, on their side, grown implacable ; their
patience was utterly exhausted, and the last moment for per-
suasion was irrevocably flown. They assembled once more,
therefore, but this time, as it would seem, under the presidency
of the cloister prior, and then once for all requested their
victim to have done with objections which they knew by
heart and were tired of hearing, and to yield instantly to
their unanimous decision. This was rough treatment for so
sensitive a nature as Anselm's. He burst into tears, and, with
a cry that harrowed every heart, fell on his face upon the
floor, praying and conjuring them in the name of Almighty
God, and by the bowels of their compassion — if human hearts
they had — and as they hoped for the mercy of God, to take
pity on him and stop short here, and quit him of such a
burden. But they had them.selves endured much more pain
than they had chosen to betray ; emotion begets emotion ;
and therefore, but to his infinite dismay, they all did as he
had done — fell prostrate as one man from their benches round
about the chapter house, and so, in that posture of utter

2i6 ULTIMATE VICTORY OF THE ELECTORS.

abasement, pleaded that it was the abbey that needed pity,
they that needed pity ; that surely the common good was not
nothing to their prior ; and that, after all, since they were
many and he one, it were ill to sacrifice the many to the
one and save self at the expense of others. The let-loose
emotion of a hundred and twenty men could scarcely be easy
to withstand ; but, weighted with an argument like this, it
was all but irresistible. Indeed, the argument is so precisely
in Anselm's own style, and so absurdly like some of his own
perfectly logical but semi-mathematical appeals, that one
would dearly like to know who invented it. It was a hunc
siio sibi gladio with a witness. Anselm's agony of distress is
not to be described, and none of the participators in that
strange scene seem to have retained a coherent recollection
of what followed ; whilst Eadmer, like a true artist, stops
short abruptly.

But did we imagine that it was what the biographer
styles the dogged affection and affectionate doggedness of
Anselm's monks which won them the victory we should be
much mistaken. Anselm had in him a capacity of obstinacy
and resources of immobility which would have left him master
of the field after a hundred such encounters, and the religious
of Le Bee had neither themselves, nor their doggedness, nor
their devotion to the prior to thank for their ultimate victory.
Their ultimate victory, I say ; for Anselm's was not an
unconditional surrender. The success they hailed at this
memorable meeting early in the September of 1078 was not
finally assured them until late in the succeeding February.

Here, then, let us pause to note the concluding passage of
Eadmer's account: — 'At last the affectionate doggedness and
dogged affection of the brethren, who desired to bear the
yoke of the Lord under Anselm's government, won the day ;
but another and incomparably the greatest factor in their
success was the injunction once laid upon him under obe-
dience by Archbishop Maurille, on no account to refuse to

THE SECRET OF A NS ELM'S REFUSAL. 217

carry the burden of any higher preferment that might here-
after be imposed on him. For, as he used to protest, he
would never have consented to be made abbot but for the
constraint of this injunction. It was by violence such as this
that he was made abbot, and with due honour consecrated at
Le Bee'

Now, upon a careful examination of the whole account,
it becomes abundantly clear that Anselm's more than obstinate
refusal was inspired from the first by something else than
that natural diffidence which the prospect of grave responsi-
bility is apt to engender ; for, had that been all, the obligation
to obey Archbishop Maurille's very sacred injunction would
have overcome his reluctance and aversion very much sooner
than it did. Had that been all, he would, when the proper
moment came, have exclaimed, ' Onus rejicere non audeo,' as
he had done twelve years ago, and submitted, if unwillingly,
yet without needless parade. The truth is that these scenes
in the chapter house do not so much recall his distress in, the
metropolitan's presence twelve years ago, as anticipate his
terrible anguish fifteen years hence at the bedside of William
Rufus ; and suggest by their very resemblance to the later
episode the presence to his conscience of some serious doubt
as to what might be his duty under present circumstances ;
those circumstances being, presumably, such as Archbishop
Maurille had not in his time contemplated. The account
reads like the record of a mental conflict, which could not
have resulted from a less cause than the incidence of new
conditions sufficiently grave to qualify even Anselm's esti •
mate of the obligation to obedience which had been so
solemnly laid on him by the Archbishop. Nor have we far
to seek for the unforeseen circumstances and the new con-
ditions. Gregory VII. had now worn the tiara for five years,
and had quite recently, under pain of excommunication,
forbidden laymen to give, or ecclesiastics to receive, inves-
titure by the crosier ; so that Anselm might well entertain

2i8 A CASE OF CONSCIENCE.

a scruple lest what had been condoned in Archbishop Mau-
rille's day might now be open to reproof as indefensibly
similar in form to the condemned usage ; I mean the exte-
rioris abbatice potestatis traditio by means of a pastoral staff.
Well might he question whether, even in a case like this,
even in a case where the election had been scrupulously
regular, utterly uncontrolled, and absolutely unanimous, and
where the most unfavourable criticism could find no excuse
for dreaming that Duke William, in handing a crosier to
the newly elected abbot, would either be consummating a
simoniacal contract or giving effect to a pretension to feu-
dalise the Church — well might he doubt whether, even under
conditions such as these, he could in conscience allow him-
self to take part in a ceremony which bore the semblance, at
least, of disobedience to supreme spiritual authority.

For he not only withstood the unanimous choice of his
monks, but prolonged his resistance to the very verge of a grave
fault — conduct which it would be difficult to explain but by the
presence of some such serious obstacle as a scruple of con-
science.^ How but thus are we to explain the earnest trial of

• The election of the fourth Abbot of Le Bee elucidates so remarkably that
of Anselm, in its differences no less than in its resemblances, that I am fain to
notice it at some length. On the death of Abbot William de Montfort, Boso, the
favourite disciple of Anselm's old age and prior of the abbey, was chosen suc-
cess-^r. He refused the election on the ground of ill health, and remained
inflexible until the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Lisieux appeared
on the scene, when the monks, once more resorting to the form of entreaty which
seems usually to have been deemed final and irresistible, threw themselves upon
the ground at his feet ; but all to no effect. The Archbishop now interfered
and required him under obedience to consent, but in vain. The thing, he
said, was impossible ; his health was unequal to the burden, and, besides, there
were in his case grave moral impediments which rendered him unfit for it.
* Are you a monk ? ' cried the astonished and scandalised Archbishop. ' I trust
so,' was the modest reply. * Very well, then; even if you had murdered twenty
men in your time I would not let you off, seeing as I do the feeling of the
house towards you.' The horrified Prior rejoined, 'Twenty men ! Why, I never
killed one.' But there was another kind of murder in the background, and he
must out with it. Taking aside the two prelates, he informed them that the
Pope— Paschal II., I suppose— had once forbidden him ever to do homage to a
layman, and that obedience to the Archbishop was thus rendered impossible.
Eventually the King waived his claim to the homage, and Boso was consecrated.

THE SECRET OF ANS ELM'S SURRENDER. 219

every expedient for slipping the burden from his shoulders
(* Quod ipse omni studio subterfugere gestiens '), the many and
various reasons laid before the electors (' multas et diversas
rationes ne id fieret'), his mental torture on their refusing
to entertain them, and his dismay as to what to do next
(* anxiatus est in eo spiritus ejus et quod ageret ignorabat ') ?
How but thus can we account for the protraction day by day
of all these endeavours, of all this anguish, of all this resource-
less quest of a way of escape ? What else can explain the final
scene — the flood of tears, the heart-rending sobs, the appeal
to his brethren's bowels of compassion, and much more that
Eadmer had not the heart to set down in writing? All
this can scarcely be otherwise interpreted than as the de-
sperate effort to escape of a man reduced to two such grave
alternatives as overt disobedience to the explicit and personal
injunction of an immediate spiritual superior and seeming
rebellion against as explicit a prohibition, albeit a general one,
from the supreme pastor of the Church.

He used to say in his old age that it was Archbishop
Maurille's peremptory injunction, and nothing else, which won
his monks the victory. It would be more correct to say that
they owed their triumph to the accuracy of his theological
instinct.

And now that he had yielded he was the last man in the
world to give scandal by refusing to comply with usages that
admitted of a favourable construction, or to anticipate disaster
by embroiling the spiritual and temporal powers of Normandy

So much for the conflict of obediences to Pope and Archbishop. But there is
more to say, Boso had disobeyed his monks before he disobeyed his bishop.
The word is scarcely too strong, and I employ it purposely.

No sooner was the difficulty composed than he protested to his monks, ' I wish
you to know that from the moment that I perceived your unanimous love for me,
if I had known that I must die on the spot, I would rather even then have died
than fail to obey your will with all promptitude, but that I feared to offend
God.'

Boso was a true monk, and well knew the meaning of monastic obedience.
So was Anselm ; and he must have had good reason for his conduct.

220 THE CONQUEROR, LORD OF BRIONNE.

in a quarrel which might prove in the event to have been
raised on a false issue.^

His exultant monks lost no time in informing the prince
of Anselm's election. William was on the point of moving
his court to Brionne, and deferred the grant of the temporali-
ties until he should be at his island castle on the Risle, but
was no sooner there than he sent three of his barons — Roger
de Montgomeri, Roger de Beaumont, and Guillaume de
Breteuil — to Le Bee to ascertain if the election had been
unanimous.

Men like these, men who have mingled in the battle of
life in portions of the field where the light fell fullest and in
moments of the struggle when passion was most fierce, are
often only too glad to pass half an hour in a monastery,
and watch, it may be with moistened eye, such intercourse as
was that of Anselm with his monks. Roger de Montgomeri,
a famous statesman and as famous a benefactor of religion
in his own country, had by a life of devotion deserved well
of the Conqueror when in 1066 he acted as his vicegerent
in Normandy during the invasion of our island, and now
enjoyed titles derived from Chichester, from Arundel, and
from Shrewsbury. Roger de Beaumont,^ who was to be in-
vested some years hence with the famous Castle of Brionne
itself, and after all end his days in a cloister, can scarcely have
been a younger man than Roger de Montgomeri ; for his
great-nephew, William de Montfort, Anselm's successor in
the abbacy, was already in or near his twenty-fourth year.

' He may, however, have sent to Rome, and I believe that he did. He would
never have yielded but that seizin is a very different thing from investiture, and
seizin by a crosier from investiture by a crosier. But although his good casuistry
had reconciled the apparent conflict between his two obediences, nothing would
be less unlikely than that he should insist on the postponement of his conse-
cration until he knew that his conduct had been approved by the Pope.

^ Curiously enough, Roger de Beaumont had a kinsman who was at this
moment living under Anselm as professed monk — his wife's brother. Count Hugh
of Meulan. Hugh had retired from the world in 1077, and was the last — or, if
not the last, the last but one— to take the habit under Herlwin's administration.

A GLIMPSE WITHIN THE CLOISTER. 221

William of Br^teuil was the youngest of the group, but cannot
have been the least favourably disposed to the Abbey of Le
Bee if he only inherited that affection for it which had inspired
his father, William Fitzosbern, to save it from ruin on a
memorable occasion a quarter of a century ago. Within a
somewhat shorter interval he was himself to find his bed of
ashes within its walls.

The three barons paid their visit, made their observations,
culled, no doubt, a hint or two from the monks about the
abbot elect and his frame of mind, and then, after a decent
delay, took leave and rode back to Brionne. They had
paced the cloister, breathed a sigh for Herlwin in the chapter
house, conversed freely with not a few members of the com-
munity, and ascertained, beyond the need of words to certify
it, how complete at once and how spontaneous was the
attachment of all of them to Anselm. Half of those men were
younger in religion, and for the most part younger in years,
than their incomparable prior ; but the elder half, inasmuch
as the last professed amongst them had worn the cowl for
some nine or ten years before the prior's profession in 1060,
were for the most part well advanced in years, and must,
from the interesting fact just mentioned, have formed quite a
distinct 'set' from the junior moiety of their body. This
elder half belonged to the old days of the mud-built cottages
down stream, and well remembered the chagrin at the
foreigner's early preferment which had so sadly tried some
of them ; but they remembered better still the patient
obstinacy of his unfailing love through many years, and,
recalling the episode of his supernatural affection for Osbern,
knew the story by heart how, when the grave closed over the
poor lad, their old jealousies were already and for ever disen-
chanted, their old ferocities already and for ever subdued,
their old hatreds already and for ever extinguished, and how,
during the last five years, each of them and all of them,
drawn, charmed, and vanquished by a purity, an elevation,

22 2 PRINCE AND PRIOR.

and a gentleness so rare as his, had found in him the
depository of their dearest hopes, the director of their hohest
endeavours, and the guide of their common journey to a
common home.

Such was the report given by William's barons. The
prince partook of their enthusiasm, and, charmed to learn
that the abbot elect was thus loved, sent them back with a
request that he would repair without delay to Brionne, bring-
ing with him a few of his religious. The message revived
all Anselm's alarms ; but the encouragements and entreaties
of his monks lent him heart, and, accompanied by a few of
them, he set out for Brionne under the escort of his three
noble friends.

No sooner were Anselm and his religious in the royal
presence than William's eye rested on the central figure of
the group, and his countenance — the countenance so often
described as one whereon a terror-striking majesty sat un-
weariedly enthroned — instantaneously changed to an expres-
sion of gentleness which had erst been deemed impossible.
The astonished attendants stood with riveted gaze, watching
the two men. Unquestionably there was more royal blood
in the subject than in the prince. But it was not Anselm's
innate and unconscious dignity of mien that made the terrible
and unbending king of men thus incline to him with modest
courtesy, and thus speak to him as equal to equal, tone and
manner both inviting him to say all that was in his heart to
say. On the contrary, William's demeanour was the homage
of a great moral power to a greater, and the outcome of one
of the noblest elements in his own character. He no sooner
saw than he interpreted the brow on which contemplation
had set her soft but indelible imprint ; the features refined in
their natural lines, but chastened by long discipline into a
type of countenance rarely seen here below ; and the eye
that looked full on him clear and calm, the witness and the
spokesman of a pure conscience and a true heart. Need he

A CROSIER. 225

demand fealty from such a man ? The fealty was there.
Or homage? He had paid it himself; why require it back
again ?

The Conqueror made no secret of the pleasure it gave
him that so singularly gifted a subject had been chosen to
adorn by his genius and his piety a chair which the heroic
virtues of its first occupant had already made illustrious. It
was, therefore, with more than ordinary satisfaction that he
next proceeded to give him seizin of the temporalities of the
abbacy by presenting him a crosier.' This, being touched
by Anselm, was handed back to its owner, a bishop, no
doubt, or abbot, who happened to be in attendance, and not
improbably the prelate upon whom it now devolved to put
him in corporal possession of the abbey by installation.

If the formality of the crosier bore an unhappy, albeit
accidental, resemblance to the condemned usage of investi-
ture, the succeeding ceremony involved no such inconvenience ;
and the prelate, who now returned with the abbot elect to
Le Bee, encountered no reluctance when, upon entering the
church, he proposed to set him in Herlwin's vacant seat in
the choir.

The monks can scarcely have been idle in the interval ;
and, if we could but lift the curtain of an inexorable oblivion,
we should probably discover that they had employed their
industry in fitting to the iron crook ^ of Herlwin's disused
crosier a staff of wood newly turned and polished. But, if
so, their labours were premature. To touch a crosier at

* As I shall have to refer to this incident on a future occasion, I will in this
place do no more than quote the following passages from Orderic : —

1. * Dux autem .... prsefato viro, qui electus erat, per cambutam Ivonis
episcopi Sagiensis exteriorevi abbaticB potestatem tradidit.'' —\\. 69.

2. * At ille .... [Mainerio] per pastoralem baculum exteriorem curam
tradidit, et prsedicto antistiti, ut ea quse sibi de spirituali cura competebant
suppleret, praecepit.' — ii. 126.

'^ If the Jumieges portrait may be trusted, ihefastigium or crook of Herlwin's
crosier can scarcely have been of ivory, or indeed of any kind of bone. I shall
revert to the subject towards the close of this book.

224 THE CROSIER.

Brionne, as he might have touched a sceptre, a walking-staff^'
or any other object which habit or caprice might employ in
token of a civil conveyance, was one thing ; but to wield
Abbot Herlwin's crosier, and to wield it at Le Bee — where,
unless it meant nothing, it meant spiritual jurisdiction — was
quite another thing. The latter he, therefore, refused to
touch, as he persisted in refusing to exceed in any other
particular the limits of privilege which he already held as
prior.

' ' Ipse quoque Ansoldus decimam quam Hersendis soror ejus in mariagio
habuerat et B. Marioe reddiderat .... per virgam quam in manu [manum ?]
Johannis monachi et presbyteri tradiderat, concessit.' — O. V. ii. 449.

225

CHAPTER II.

ABBOT ANSELM'S CONSECRATION AND FIRST VISIT TO
ENGLAND.

The ceremonies observed at the consecration of an abbot,
simple as they may be, are at once so various, and so entirely
dependent for their moral effect upon the unchangeable
liturgical forms into which they are engrafted, that it would
be as difficult for modern pen to give a short and efficient
description of them as it had been supererogatory in a writer
of the twelfth century to do more than record the mere fact
of such a solemnity in order to revive mental impressions
as familiar to his readers as to himself. But, if by this time
we have formed a just estimate of Anselm's character and of
the affectionate reverence it had conciliated within the pre-
cinct of his convent b}; the spring of 1079, we have what is,
after all, of greater value than any such account ; for we know
what must have been his own emotions, and what those of
his household, as he and they took their respective parts in
the eventful function performed in the Church of our Lady of
Le Bee on the twenty-second of February in that year.^ The
Archbishop of Rouen being disabled by illness, the office
of celebrant^ devolved upon the prelate who had in the
previous summer committed to the earth all that was mortal

^ The feast of St. Peter's Chair. Why was this day chosen for the ceremony ?
Or rather, why had five months been allowed to elapse from the day of the
final election, and, as I suppose, four months and a half from the day of
installation ?

'^ The fragment printed by Dom Bouquet (xiv. 270) errs in saying that Rouen
was 'absque pastore.' Archbishop John was not dead, but speechless from
paralysis. He lived till the ninth of the following September.

VOL. I. Q

226 THE CONSECRATION OF THE NEW ABBOT.

of Herlwin ; the high-born and stately Gilbert, Bishop of
Evreux.

The Church of our Lady of Le Bee had been arrayed in
all its splendour ; the walls glowed with Lanfranc's tapestries,
and the altar shone with jewels and damask, the gift of one
of the most illustrious of the assistants at the ceremony. A
widow since early in the January of 1074, the interest which
the Lady Eva took in all that concerned Blessed Herlwin's
monastery was in great part a bequest from her husband,
William Crispin, who had died in the religious habit, and now
slept his long sleep in the adjoining cloister.^ She and hers
unanimously accorded Anselm such honours as were held due
to the eldest son of such a house as theirs. She was his
mother, he was her son, and one of his brothers by adoption
had recently carried letters for him to Aosta, and not impro-
bably another and more private communication still further
south.2

Besides this lady and her family there were in the church,
no doubt, representatives of the best houses of Normandy,
eager to offer their congratulations to the new abbot, eager
to crave his blessing, eager, too, to minister something in
mitigation of a distress which for six months had pressed
very heavily upon him and his community, and of which I
shall say something in the next chapter.

We have seen that his reluctance to accept the abbatial
dignity was a suggestive precursor of the troubles which were
to befall him after the lapse of fourteen years ; and it is a
curious circumstance that he was scarcely consecrated before

' The year of William Crispin's death is ascertained from the Nomina
Monachorum, the month and day from an extract from the necrology of Beaumont-
le-Roger in the National Library at Paris (Latin, 13905,) This document has
under 'Januarius, 6 idus 0[biit] I"' {i.e. primus) Will. Crispinus monachus
nostrse congregationis.' The date, therefore, of William Crispin's death is
January 8, 1074.

2 Epp. i. 18, ii. 9, 26.

For an account of this family the reader will be pleased to consult the fragment
De nobili genere Crispinorum, appended to D'Achery's edition of Latifranc.

WISSANT. 227

he made acquaintance with the very country in which those
troubles were to have their theatre. The earliest important
event of his abbacy was a journey which he made to England
for the double purpose of visiting the monastic estates and of
offering his respects to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Never as yet had Anselm adventured the waves. Twenty
years ago from the ramparts of the Castle of Avranches his
wondering eye had for the first time scanned the broad ocean
and gazed on the lustrous purple of the tides that wash the
Cotentin ; and it is just possible that from the Castle of
Boulogne he may subsequently have measured the silver
streak that severs the chalk cliffs of Kent from the seaboard
of Picardy ; but he was as yet a stranger to the perils of the
deep — perils which, though neither few nor imaginary, were
multiplied and exaggerated by his adopted mother and by
his children in religion, who, so far from allaying that lady's
apprehensions, seem to have enhanced them by their own.

Taking leave, however, of the tearful and agitated dowager
and of his own tearful and agitated monks, Anselm set forth
upon an expedition which had been the subject not only of
his prayers and of theirs, but of the prayers of tenants, and of
friends and neighbours both far and near, ever since it was
first contemplated. He was attended by the proper com-
panions of such a journey, and by Dom Girard, whose know-
ledge of the language, the customs, and the topography of
Flanders qualified him to act as guide to the port of em-
barkation. The name of that port still survives in Wissant,
an inland hamlet lying between Boulogne and Calais ; for,
thanks to the slow operation of natural causes, the ancient
harbour has long been choked by its own white sand, and
deserted by the sea, whose tides now ebb and flow four miles
away to the west.

And a like fate has befallen Anselm's landing-place, since
the Portus Lemanis of the Roman occupation, changed by
the eleventh century to the name of Lympne, has long been

Q 2

228 LYMINGE.

deserted by the briny wave, which now breaks on the low
shore of Romney marsh at the distance of well-nigh a league
from its ancient limit.

Nor is the next stage in the Abbot's journey unrecorded.
On the Via Lymensea, the Roman road that ran from
Lympne to Canterbury, there stood in Roman times a military
station, superseded in early Saxon period by a residence of
the Kings of Kent, and subsequently by the archiepiscopal
manor of Lyminge. The hundred of Moniberg, or Nuniberg,
in which Lyminge stands, recalls by its name the convent
for nuns established there by no less a person than St.
Ethelburg early in the seventh century. There, too, was
Ethelburg buried on the thirteenth of December, 647 ;
and there, in a spot to this day indicated by an arched
buttress of singular aspect, her body still reposed in the year
1079.' The Archbishop was at the manor house awaiting his
visitor, who on the following day wrote thus to his monks : —

* Dominis et fratribus dilectissimis in Beccensi ccetiobio
Deo servientibus f rater A nselmus, servus et conservus eorum
semper sanctk vivere et sanctce vitcB premium per cipere.

* Knowing, and knowing but too well, how truly anxious
you in your love for me are to have news of my safety and
well-being, I dare not distress you with any delay. On the
day that Dom Girard, soon after sunrise, took leave of me

* In 1085 her relics were transported by Lanfranc to the Hospital of St.
Gregory, recently established by him at Canterbury.

The following extract from Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent will interest,
and may possibly entertain, some of my readers : — * I read in the Annals of St.
Augustine of Canterbury that Eadbald (the sonne of King Ethelbert, the first
christened King of Kent) gave it to Edburge, his sister, who forthwith clocked
together a sort of simple women who, under her wing, there tooke upon them
the Popish veile of widowhood.' And again, 'Lanfranc, the Archbishop ....
translated the olde bones of Edburge from Lyminge to Sainct Gregorie's, and
verified in Papistrie the olde maxim of philosophic, '* Corruptio unius generatio
alterius " (The corruption of one is the generation of another).'

The monastery of Lyminge was recovered to the See of Canterbury by Arch-
bishop Lanfranc : * Monasterium de Liminge cum terris et consuetudinibus ad
ipsum pertinentibus.'

THE RIDE TO CANTERBURY. 229

on board ship, the Divine protection answered your prayers
by landing me in the middle of the afternoon on the shores
of England, after a prosperous voyage, in which I suffered
none of the inconveniences that afflict so many when at
sea ; and by bringing me in the evening into the society of
our lord and father Archbishop Lanfranc, who gave me a
hearty welcome in his manor of Lyminge ; on the morrow
of which events I pen these lines, hoping thus to satisfy
your desire, and at the same time to urge and exhort your
pious industry to burn with unceasing ardour and make
ever fresh progress. As a brother I entreat, and as a father
I admonish you, so to make it your study to live together as
monks and religious, as that when you are blessed with the
reward that awaits your endeavours I may have some share
in the blessing. May Almighty God by His own dear care
preserve you from all ill, and show His mercy upon you by
still granting you all good, both in body and soul. Tell
Lady Eva, our mother, the news, which, equally with you,
she is longing to hear of her eldest son ; and ask her to
pray that, as her prayers, together with yours, have gained
me the favour of a prosperous departure, notwithstanding
all your fears, so they may obtain for me the further grace
of a joyful return to your joyful midst' ^

The journey of the Archbishop and the Abbot from Lyminge
to Canterbury was not without its proper interest. The two
had not thus ridden together for twenty years ; not since the
memorable occasion when, had the elder friend bidden the
younger turn anchorite then and there in the forest, he would
have been obeyed.

At that time Lanfranc had already attained his grand
climacteric, whilst Canon Anselm of Aosta was a young
clergyman of six-and-twenty. The latter is now in the
maturity of his manhood, and, although it is several years

» Ep. ii. 9.

230 THE CHRIST CHURCH PRECINCT.

since the former told off his full tale of fourscore, the grand
old man is nevertheless vigorous enough at this very moment
in all his magnificent endowments both of mind and body-
to give hope of an administration continued for an entire
decade longer.

At that time Anselm was doubting whether to turn hermit,
monk, or hospitaller ; now, not only is he a famous abbot, he
has by his transcendent gifts of soul and intellect compelled
the unique homage of his prince, won the passionate devotion
of his spiritual children, and in spite of himself achieved
immortality.

At that time Lanfranc^ the prior of an obscure and
poverty-stricken mud-walled monastery, was laboriously
striving by daily drudgery to procure funds for the erection
of a new church ; now, Primate of the Britains and patriarch
of the orbis transmarinus, he has, with princely resources at
his disposal, rebuilt St. Augustine's Cathedral Church at
Canterbury ; and now, even now, as they near the solemn
pile, its bells ring forth wild welcome to him and to his guest.

On dismounting at the gate of the precinct of Christ
Church, Anselm was confronted by its peculiar pomp. Prior
Henry, his old friend from Le Bee, stood in the gateway,
attired in cope of rich embroidery and bearing in his hands
a Gospel-book heavy with goldsmith's work and encrusted
with gems ; on either side of the Prior stood a monk, one
holding holy water and the other a censer; whilst behind
these latter, and extending in two lines to the great western
door, were the rest of the community, all of them arrayed in
copes or dalmatics, except the choir boys, who wore tunicles.
As soon as the Archbishop had offered holy water and
incense to his guest, and the latter had kissed the book of the
Gospels, a psalm was intoned, and the procession filed into
the cathedral.

I need scarcely say that the eastern limb of the basilica
contained the sanctuary, the apsidal termination of which

THE CHRIST CHURCH CHAPTER HOUSE. 231

was made additionally venerable by the quasi- patriarchal
throne of St. Augustine ; that the three easternmost bays
of the nave were enclosed so as to form the monks' choir,
and that the western entrance to this enclosure was sur-
mounted by a colossal cross, on which hung a figure of our
Divine Redeemer. On the pavement in front of this crucifix,
and thus in the middle bay of the nave, carpets had been
spread on which the visitor was to kneel in silent prayer
before entering the choir; and like preparations had been
made on the first ascent of the sanctuary, where again he
was to spend a short time in devotion before entering the
cloister.

But he was impatient to acknowledge the compliment
paid him in a reception which seems very greatly to have
surpassed in splendour and magnificence all previous solem-
nities of the kind ; and was without delay conducted into the
chapter house, which adjoined the cathedral, lying between its
northern and eastern limbs, and there set in the seat of honour.
When all had taken their places, a lesson of Holy Scripture was
read before him; and then there was deep silence. Every
ear was strained to catch the first tones of a voice about the
fascination of which Dom Maurice had had so much to say ;
and of all the eyes fixed on him none were more eager than
those of an acute and observant lad, English by name and
birth, who was resolved to make notes of the sermon. His
name was Eadmer.

The discourse, introduced by a few words of direct and
formal acknowledgment, was characteristically Anselm's, in
form cold and analytical as Aristotle, in meaning and purpose
warm and sympathetic as himself; and as it seems to have
been a sample of the method now for fifteen years employed
by him at Le Bee, a method designed to prove that the
deductions of right reason are in precise harmony with the
maxims of Divine wisdom which lie scattered over the pages
of Holy Writ, I venture to think that the reader will be

232 A 'SERMO RATIONABILIS:

pleased to make acquaintance with so much of it as Eadmer
contrived to remember and record. I cannot, however, help
thinking that, if the young monk had been at the time con-
versant with Anselm's method, he would have taken care to
make note of the text which it was designed to elucidate.
The subject was charity, and the illustrious expositor en-
deavoured to convince his audience from considerations
suggested to us by our reason {rationabiliter) that he who
bestows a kindness on another is in a higher moral state
{majus aliquid habct) than he who receives it. ' He that does
a kind thing makes God his debtor, not so he to whom it is
done ; for how is God m.ade my debtor by my receipt of a
favour from you or from anybody } If, therefore, it be a better
thing {majus) to have that whereby God makes Himself a
debtor, than that whereby He does not, then, since God
makes Himself a debtor for kindnesses done, but not for kind-
nesses received, it follows that he who bestows is in a higher
state than he who receives a kindness.

' Again, he that receives attention from another has the
benefit of the good office, nothing more ; he has played his
part, and it is over. For example, he receives an estate, a
benefice, a dinner of ceremony, or some such civility ; but the
other, after he has rendered the good office, still keeps the
kindness that inspired it.

* And of this, my reverend brethren, we have an instance
ready to hand in our mutual relation at this moment. You
have granted me the favour of a kindly office ; it is a kindly
office, I say, which you have lavished on me. I have received
it, and already it is a favour past ; but the charity that
prompted it, and which is so pleasing to God, still remains
and dwells in your heart. And is not an abiding good a
better thing, in your judgment, than a good by its very nature
transitory }

* And, besides, if — and I will not deny it — by reason of your
kind office towards me, there has been some growth of charity

THE PRIVILEGE OF ' CONFRATERNITAS? 233

in my own breast, even this will redound to your reward,
since it is to you that I owe so great a good. . . .

* If, then, we pay proper heed to these considerations we
shall, I am sure, rest convinced that we have greater reason
to congratulate ourselves when we are kind to others than
when others are kind to us. All do not take this into their
consideration, and hence many rather desire to be loved than
to love.'

But it was not enough for Anselm to be the guest of the
monks of Christ Church ; he wished to be their brother. He
therefore seized the earliest opportunity of craving the privilege
o{ frater7iitas. Prostrating himself in the customary manner
upon the floor of the chapter house, he made his request to
the Archbishop in these words : * Peto per misericordiam
Dei et vestram et omnium istorum seniorum societatem et
beneficium hujus monasterii.' The request was granted in
the following formula : * Omnipotens Dominus concedat
vobis quod quaeritis, et ipse praestet vobis consortium elec-
torum suorum.* He then rose and advanced to the Arch-
bishop, who presented to him the Book of the Rule as the
symbol of fraternal communion, saluted him with the
customary kiss, and then seated him at his side, now no
longer a friend, but a brother, and a sharer in life and after
death of the prayers and good works of the monks of Christ
Church. At the conclusion of the chapter each of the monks
in his turn greeted him with the holy kiss.

This first visit of his to Canterbury was singularly well-
timed, and was followed by happy results. Had he come a
few years sooner, his awed and fascinated hosts would scarcely
have been ripe to profit by the severe and exalted standard of
monastic holiness which was to be recognised in all he said
and did. For Lanfranc, on his arrival in 1070, found in the
monks of Christ Church a community sadly fallen away from
the ancient English piety. * They amused themselves with
hunting, with falconry, with horse-racing ; they loved to rattle

234 THE CHRIST CHURCH CLOISTER,

the dice ; they indulged in drink ; they wore fine clothes,
studied personal appearance, disdained a frugal and quiet life^
and had so many people to wait upon them that they were
more like fine gentlemen than monks.' Such had they been
nine years ago. * But Lanfranc, skilled in the art of arts, the
government of souls, and knowing well that habit is second
nature, though bent on reforming, did his work with prudence,
and, plucking up the weeds little by little, sowed good seed in
their place.' ^ And now, though many of them dared scarcely
hope to reach, all could at least appreciate and admire, how-
ever remotely, Anselm's exalted ideal of the religious voca-
tion ; for many of the things which he said surprised by their
novelty, no less than edified by their fervour, and the pictures
of the monastic state which he drew, sometimes in sermons in
the chapter house, sometimes in conversations in the cloister,
dazzled and amazed them, not so much by their strange un-
likeness to the life once led in the Christ Church cloister, as
by their exhibition of a type of existence which they had
hitherto deemed unattainable here below : —

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,

Whose loves in higher love endure.

What souls possess themselves so pure ?
Or is there blessedness like theirs?

But all these eloquent addresses of Anselm's had the
characteristic peculiarity of his first discourse to them in the
chapter house, and although designed for the heart were
recommended to the understanding by a rationabilis faamdia
which was to be of service to the Archbishop himself as well
as his monks before the visit had come to a close.

The name of a predecessor in the See of Canterbury,
put to death by the Danes in 1012 — I mean Archbishop
Elphege — had been proposed to Lanfranc for canonisation ; or
rather, Elphege having been already canonised by the vox

' William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontiff, lib. i.

ST. MAYEUL OF CLUNY. 235

populi, Lanfranc had been asked to set his name in the
calendar. But the acute Lombard hesitated to style him
saint simply because he had lived a good life, or martyr
because he had died a violent death. St. Cyprian's maxim,
* Non facit martyrem poena sed causa,' had by this time been
only too much neglected, not only in our own country, but in
others. Thus in the Flemish monastery of St. Bavon the
relics were honoured of an ' Adrianus martyr,' of whom there
seems to have been no more to say than that he had been * a
latrone interemptus,' and those of a ' Sanctus Livinus episco-
pus,' concerning whom there was little knowledge, if any,
beyond the circumstance that he had been * a viris malignis
interemptus.' No one would begrudge the crown of sanctity
to Meinrad, the hermit of Einsiedeln, but surely his contem-
poraries erred in assigning him the palm of martyrdom
simply because he died at the hand of assassins ; and, how-
ever good a child the young Saxon king St. Edward may
have been, no theologian would pretend that his eternal crown
is adorned with the martyr's jewel for no other reason than
that he was prematurely hurried to it by the treachery of his
step-mother.

But the case of Archbishop Elphege was not quite the
first of its kind. St. Mayeul, the famous Abbot of Cluny,
was once, in the course of a journey home from Rome,
captured by Saracens in the mountainous country below
Mont Genevre. The enemy required a ransom for him and
his companions, and asked if he had the means at command
for paying one. He replied that he had nothing of his own,
and wished for nothing, but that he had tenants with no lack
of real and personal property. Thereupon they fixed their
price at a thousand pounds of silver, and despatched a mes-
senger to Cluny, who bore a letter from the abbot himself
containing these words : ' Nunc vero, si placet, pro me et his
qui mecum sunt capti, redemptionem mittite.' The money
was raised and the captives liberated. Now, if Mayeul had

236 ST. ELPHEGE OF CANTERBURY.

chosen to die rather than resort to his tenants for assistance,
would he thereby have merited the title of martyr ? By no
means. Yet there can be no doubt that the general voice of
the age would have assigned it to him. But by Lanfranc's
time the uninstructed prodigality of the popular complacency
had gone to such lengths that the admirers of Elphege,
whilst promoting his canonisation, took no account of one of
the most important elements in his case ; and, though they
mentioned another, did so incidentally and without any sus-
picion of its real value ; for, as I have said, it was in their
estimate a sufficient title to martyrdom that a good life should
have been crowned with a violent death.

* Whilst he was engaged in these reforms and had Anselm
under his roof, a friend and brother of one mind with himself,
he one day said to him, as they were engaged in conversa-
tion, " Our English friends here have made themselves some
saints, but when I come to think, as I sometimes do, about
the subjects of this devotion as pourtrayed by those who pay
it, I find it hard to free my judgment from some doubt as to
their claim to beatification. Here in this very see, where
by God's providence I am now set, one of them now sleeps
his long sleep, Elphege by name ; a good man, undoubtedly,
and in his time Archbishop of Canterbury. They account
him a saint, but they do more ; they number him amongst the
martyrs, although they acknowledge that he was put to death,
not for the confession of the name of Christ, but because he
refused to pay a price for his life. The pagans who, to use
the English idiom, were envious ^ at him, and haters of God,
having taken him prisoner, nevertheless, out of reverence for
his person, allowed him the alternative of redeeming himself,
and demanded of him an enormous sum of money for his

' Mmuli. The word ' envy ' is still used in some of our counties in the
sense of spite, grudge, resentment. In the sixteenth century this employment of
the word was classical. ' I was envious at the foolish;' ' Be not thou envious at
the wicked doers.' Lanfranc's words are worthy of note : — * Cum ilium, ut verbis
utar Anglorum, semuli ejus .... pagani cepissent,'

THE TITLE OF 'SAINT:

237

ransom. But, as it was impossible for him to procure the
amount without having recourse to his vassals, some of whom
would thus have been impoverished, and others, perhaps,
reduced to shameful beggary,* he elected to lose his life rather
than to keep it on such terms. Now, my brother, I am
anxious to hear your opinion upon this." '

The picture of two such men in council, the unaffected
condescension of the one, the unfrightened humility of the
other, their dignified familiarity and well-yoked skill, con-
stitute one of the prettiest of Eadmer's vignettes.

* As one man of penetration engaged in conference with
another, Anselm replied to this appeal in clear and luminous
phrase, as follows : — " There can be no doubt that he who
does not hesitate to die rather than commit even a slight sin
against God would be infinitely more ready to die rather
than offend God by some grievous sin ; and, of course, to
deny Christ is a more grievous sin than that a lord of the
soil 2 should for the redemption of his life put his vassals
{homines) to some temporary distress by a heavy drain on
their purse. But this lesser thing Elphege refused to do.
Much more unlikely, therefore, would he have been to deny
Christ, had the infuriated crew urged him to do so by
threatening him with death. Thus it clearly appears that
holiness of an admirably high type held possession of his
soul, since he chose rather to resign his life than, regardless
of charity, to scandalise his neighbours. Far from him,
therefore, was the * Wo ' which the Lord threatens to him by
whom scandal comes." '

Thus much, then, for St. Anselm's opinion as to the
claim advanced on behalf of Elphege to the designation of
Saint. He was more than good, as Lanfranc avowed — he was

* William of Malmesbury (Gesta Regum, lib. ii.) says, ' Ipse patriarcha sanctus
et reverendissimus vir Elfegus abductus et in vinculis tentus ad extremum cum
rusticos suos expilare ad se redimendum cogeretur et abnueret lapidatus et securj
percussus, anima coelum glorificavit.' He was put to death April 19, 1012.

2 ' Terrenus dominus.'

238 THE DESIGNATION OF 'MARTYR:

heroically good ; and he was heroically good, not in refusing
to claim the aid ad corpus redimendum which the custom of
the age gave him the right to require of his vassals, but
because, the ransom required being enormous, he chose to
die rather than give scandal by consenting to its exaction.
What follows relates to the second and graver question, Was
Elphege in the strict sense of the term a martyr ?

* Nor is he, in my opinion, unworthy of a place among
the martyrs who, as we know on perfectly veracious testimon5^
went to meet his death for a justice so heroic in its elevation.
For blessed John the Baptist, who is venerated as a martyr
first and foremost, and reputed such by the common consent
of the Church of God, was put to death not for refusing to
deny Christ, but for refusing to hush truth in silence. And
what difference is there between dying for truth and dying
for justice } Furthermore, inasmuch as, by the testimony of
Holy Writ, as it little needs to tell your Grace {yestra pater-
nitas), Christ is Truth and Christ is Justice, he who dies for
justice and truth dies for Christ ; and he who dies for Christ
is by the Church esteemed a martyr. Now the blessed
Elphege died for justice precisely in the same way as the
blessed John died for truth. Why, then, should any of us
doubt of one more than of the other that his death was a
veritable and a holy martyrdom, since death was encountered
from a like motive by each > It seems to me, my reverend
father, that — so far at least as I understand the case — this
argument is a good one ; but if you think otherwise, I refer
it to your wisdom to set me right, and recall me from my
conclusion, and to instruct the Church of God and show her
what is the most fitting view to take in a matter of such
importance.'

The Archbishop was convinced. He had not been want-
ing in piety to the saints of his new country, to St. Ethelburg,
to St. Dunstan, to St. Oswald, to St. Aldhelm ; but he
seems, in pursuance of Anselm's argument, to have con-

WINCHCOMB AND BRIXTON DEVERIL. 239

ceived a sudden and enthusiastic devotion for his heroic
predecessor. Not only did he cause an accurate history of
the life and passion of St. Elphege to be compiled, but had
the story set to music, to be read and sung in his cathedral ; ^
and the Proper of the Saint's mass was not improbably the
production of no other pen than his.^

If the monastery of Le Bee could at this moment boast
as many as two estates in the west of our island, those estates
lay at Winchcomb in Oxfordshire, and Brixton Deveril in
Wilts ; if only one, then Anselm's longest journey in his tour
of inspection must have been to the former of these places.
But an expedition, whether into Oxfordshire or into the more
distant county, involved several pauses both in going and re-
turning, and doubtless afforded, not only to deans and abbots,
but to the great vassals of the Crown whose houses lay on the
road, an opportunity of inviting the blessing which they felt
sure would attend the residence, however short, of such a guest
under their roof. As warm a greeting awaited the Abbot of
Le Bee at a baron's castle as in the guest chamber of a
monastery ; and in one no less than in the other he fascinated
and won the hearts of his hosts by the effortless sensibility
which renders a refined and elevated nature all things to
all, and the broad-hearted love which knows how to con-
secrate the courtesies of human converse to highest and
holiest aims. To those who were not monks he made him-
self as if he were not a monk, that so he might win to the

> All this was done by Dom Osbern, who was, if not then, yet at a later
date, Precentor of Christ Church, and has been described by William of
Malmesbury {Gesta Regum, lib. ii.) as 'nulli nostro tempore stylo secundus,
musica certo omnium sine controversia primus.' It would almost appear that
Osbern was not at this moment at Canterbury. lie was sent over to Le Bee in
1073 ; but I cannot be certain how long he remained there. I think, however,
that he can scarcely have returned to England before 1081, when he probably
replaced Dom Maurice, who had by that time been sent to St. Neot's (see Ep. iii.
5). Seven or eight years at Le Bee under Anselm must have done much for the
style in composition so much praised by William of Malmesbury.

2 See Appendix. By a decretal of Alexander III., in 1181, all causes of
canonisation were henceforth to be submitted to the Holy See.

240 TOOTING-BECK.

* perfect life' of the cloister both secular canons and men
whose salvation was imperilled by an undue attachment to
their state as denizens of the world. And though the ideal
he propounded was severe, his hearers invariably listened
to him with a zest that bespoke a hunger and a thirst to
which none had hitherto thus ministered ; such was his
clearness of method, such his fascination of manner, such his
purity and singleness of purpose. The more illustrious the
rank of his hosts, the more hearty was the welcome which
they accorded him ; and Eadmer seems to remark of this
his first visit to England what in course of years was un-
doubtedly the fact, that there was neither earl nor countess
who did not deem it a loss of merit not to have shown some
kindness to Anselm, or made some offering to God in the
person of His servant.

But Le Bee had estates in Surrey, one at Tooting and
another at Streatham ^ — both of them the gift of one of the
foremost of the Conqueror's barons, whose name it would not
be proper to pass over in silence.

It was not long after Herlwin's retirement from the world
that his friend Gilbert, Count of Brionne, fell a victim to the
vindictive rage of a family whose resentment he seems to
have made it his business to provoke, and left behind him two
little boys, Richard and Baldwin, who were at once carried
by their tutor into Flanders and placed under the protection
of Duke William's future father-in-law. Upon his alliance
with Matilda, Duke William restored them to their native
country, where, by the gift of Bienfaite, Orbec, and other
estates, he made them only too imperfect a compensation for
the loss of their paternal inheritance, the noblest portion of
which, the Castle of Brionne and its domain, was now in his
own hand ; but some thirteen years later he rewarded Richard's

' * The two manors seem to have been (subsequently) consolidated, and to be
what is now called the Manor of Tooting- Bee, being Upper Tooting, which is in
the parish of Streatham.' — Manning's County of Surrey.

ST. NEOT'S. 241

services on the field of Senlac with a grant of land in the
conquered kingdom. Now the proper domain of Brionne
reached to the distance of a milliariiim Brionense from the
castle in all directions ; and the story goes that Richard de
Bienfaite, ascertaining by actual survey the exact length of
the milliarium, had the measuring line transported from
Brionne to England, and there traced round about his new
stronghold at Tunbridge just such a circle as had determined
the lost domain.

But attachment to home was not all that Earl Richard
had inherited from Gilbert of Brionne ; and, if he had given
the manors of Tooting and Streatham to his father's favourite
monastery during its founder's lifetime, one of his earliest
acts under the new administration was, in conjunction with
Rohais, his countess, to dedicate to religion Richard, the
youngest of his five sons. This young gentleman, affec-
tionately called a monachus parvulus by the good abbot, will
reappear in the course of the history ; and all that I need
meanwhile say about him is that some time after his profes-
sion at Le Bee he was sent back to England to lead the
religious life under Dom Maurice in the first priory which the
mother house seems to have established in our island, the
Priory of St. Neot, in Huntingdonshire ; and that in the year
1 100 he was nominated Abbot of Ely.

We learn from the Ely archives that, shortly after the
Conquest, Gilbert of Clare— an error, I presume, for Richard
Fitzgilbert of Clare — laid claim to property at Neotsbury
which really belonged to the Abbey of Ely, and ousted the
monks in residence, with the exception of three, who, in-
vincible by famine or violence, held dogged possession of it
until they were transported to Le Bee to be replaced by a
colony from that monastery. They must have held out, I
imagine, from 1069 to 1072 ; and I think their names were
Osmund, Allard, and Ruard.^ Be this as it may, Anselm in

• The story of these three men's heroic obstinacy is to be found in Drysdale's
VOL. I. R

242 DOM RODOLF OF BEAUVAIS.

1079 paid a visit to his Huntingdonshire priory, where he
opened the shrine which contained the relics of the saint, and,
removing a small portion of them for his own monastery,
relocked the chest and took possession of the key.

His return to Le Bee was accelerated by most interesting
news, the news of a vocation to the religious life for which
he had long hoped and prayed.

Dom Rodolf, treasurer of the Cathedral of Beauvais, be-
longed to a corporation of secular ecclesiastics who practised
with but indifferent zeal the virtues which became their order,
and were already converting their prebends into hereditary
benefices transmissible to their illegitimate offspring. Rodolf's
youth had thus far served as protection to his innocence, and
it was Rodolf's youth which had now for some time pleaded
with Anselm to snatch him, if snatch he might, from reach
of the contagious influences which so closely beset him.
Rodolf seems to have been appointed treasurer to the society
for no other reason than that it was his fortune to be the son
of one of those great noblemen who had it in their power to
convert great ecclesiastical preferments into sources of liveli-
hood for their children ; and, so far from dreaming of the
cloister, responded with eager zest to the solicitations of the
world until the summer of 1079, when he paid a visit to Le
Bee, nobody quite knew why. As, however, he was taking
his departure, an irresistible impulse seized him, and, exclaim-
ing that he was resolved to become a monk, he sent away his
horse in charge of an attendant, went back into the cloister,
insisted on being allowed to remain, and soon displayed so
vivid an anxiety and so mature a fitness for the religious life
that before the news could be carried to England his hair had
been shorn to the fashion of the Crown of Thorns and his
canon's dress exchanged for the dirty-white frock of the
novices of Le Bee.

Monasticon and in Gorham's History of St. Neofs. The latter work contains
a letter of Anselm's, not published elsewhere, about the shrine of St. Neot.

DOM RODOLF'S NOVITIATE. 243

Apprised of his conversion, the overjoyed and thankful
abbot wrote to him from England in the following terms : —

* Frater Ansehnus, dictus abbas Beccertsis, suo olim amico
desideratissimo, nunc domino et fratri et filio charissimo,
novo Christi ntiliti Rodulfo ; per contemptum terrenarum
et falsarum divitiarum adipisci ccelestes et veras divtiias,

* Glory be to God on high, who on earth gives men good
will, whose high right hand has, according to my desire,
turned the will of my dear and longed for child from a
world, which in the event does no good to any and very
much harm to all who love it ; turned it from the vain
world to very truth, the truth which never hurt any and is
good to all who seek her. I speak to you in this short
letter, dearest to my heart, you whom my conscience tells
me I long to see more than all mankind, and to converse
with face to face more than with any living mortal.^ For
I know the devil's malignant spite ; I know how he chafes
with rage to find that you have slipped from his hands — ay,
slipped from his lips. And hence I am sure that he will
in many ways try to befool you. The service of God which
you have chosen is, he will tell you, a grievous burden,
and his own service in the world's love, which you have
renounced, a delightful one. So that .... my soul
within me will have no rest until my eyes shall see my
desired one, and my mouth speak to my dearest child, and
my heart strengthen my new comrade to withstand the darts
of the devil.

'Therefore I beseech Almighty God, who has with-
drawn you from the love of the vain world, and His most
holy Mother, who, on your flying to her, has taken you
under her protection, to keep you safe from any shaking
of your resolution, And I beg you, through Him whose

^ 'Plus quam alicui in terra viventi.' A reservation not improbably inspired
by his ijnniortal love for Osbern.

R 3

244 DOM RODOLF'S PROFESSION.

grace inspired you to take it, to allow no crafts and no
suggestions of the enemy to alarm you. For that enemy
tries to annoy you, that he may conquer and rejoice over
you ; but God permits this that you may have a claim
^ to the crown your victory shall win. . . . The Lord pre-
serve you from all evil. Amen.'

Returning to his monastery without delay, he at an early
date received Dom Rodolf's profession, and, soon afterwards,
if not on the same occasion, that of his monachus parvulus,
Dom Richard. It must have been about this time that he
professed Baldric, his future prior ; and, before many weeks
had passed, a great-nephew of Roger de Beaumont presented
himself at the gates of the abbey, craving admission to its
cloister ; I mean William de Montfort, whose home on the
Risle lay at no great distance, and who was one day himself
to become Abbot of Le Bee.

245

CHAPTER III.

ABBOT ANSELM IN HIS CLOISTER : HIS SECOND VISIT TO
ENGLAND.

The summer of 1078 had been exceptionally hot and dry ;
no rain fell in all the north-west of Gaul, and a drought ensued
such as filled men's hearts with the gloomiest forebodings.^
Herlwin passed away just as the heat was at its worst ; and
scarcely was he gone when a sudden rise in the price of provi-
sions showed Anselm and his monks, or might have shown
them, how grave was the general apprehension.

The following season was scarcely less unpropitious to the
fruits of the earth, and by the anniversary of Herlwin's death
the prospects at Le Bee were exceedingly gloomy.

Meanwhile, however, the new abbot and his monks had
purchased some plots of land at a price which told seriously
on their resources, and had followed up the sublime im-
providence by a second. One of the bells of their church was
cracked, and another refused to ring in tune with the rest of
the peal. They therefore took them down, and set about
converting them into a large tenor, when, finding that the
metal was insufficient, they purchased with pious haste and

' I am indebted for these facts to an MS. preserved in the public library at
Orleans, Clarii Floi'iacensis Chronicon. I do not know if it has been printed.
' Anno m. 1. xx. viii. Hoc anno totum tempus sestatis nimis calidum sine pluvia
fuit, unde multi fuerunt territi.' This throws light on a letter of Anselm's to
Archbishop Lanfranc, in which he gives some account of the distress. That letter
{^Ep. ii. i) is not given in full in the printed editions.

The Chronicle of St. Hubert, with which I have made acquaintance since the
preceding note was written, and on which that note throws some light, seems to
imply that the drought of 1078, like the terrible cold of the previous winter,
extended from end to end of Europe.

246 'TRUST IN GOD:

at great cost what was wanting to complete their work.
Michaelmas came, the Michaelmas of 1079 ; the tithe corn
was paid in, their own harvest was housed in the granary at
Le Pare, and then the frightful truth burst on them that
they had neither food nor money to last them till All Saints'
Day. Darker and yet darker loomed the coming woe, when,
as even now they felt the keen tooth of famine, there came
a present of twenty pounds from Lanfranc to avert the
calamity. But those twenty pounds were swallowed up and
disappeared, just as the first shower after drought sinks into
the thirsty earth and vanishes ; and before many days the
poor men were for a second time at their wits' end. It was
in this or some other such conjuncture — for the crisis recurred
more than once — that when treasurer from his empty chest,
bursar from his empty larder, sacristan from his unprovided
sacristy, flew to the prior in pale quest of help, he imper-
turbably replied, * Trust in God, and I feel sure He will
supply all our wants,' and so resumed his occupation. That
very day, or early next morning, word was brought that
barges from England laden with provisions — beans and oats,
if nothing better — had come up the Risle and were moored
at Pont-Authou, waiting to be discharged. But after a few
weeks treasurer, bursar, and sacristan appeared as before,
not doubting that within four-and-twenty hours a hundred
hungry men would be sitting in the refectory at empty
tables. ' Trust in God ' was the quiet rejoinder, and before
the next setting sun some baron or other great personage was
announced, who, bringing with him a bag of money, had come
to crave the confraternitas of the community ; and once
more they escaped starvation.

Despair could never refuse to breathe again when once the
poor monks knew that their abbot had uttered his omnipotent
' Trust in God.' ' Trust in God,' he said another time, and
presently a rich postulant ^ was in the guest room, offering

' The rich postulant to whom Eadmer alludes was probably William de

THE COUNTY COURT OF BRIONNE, 247

himself and all his worldly goods to the service of God under
the patronage of Our Lady of Le Bee. And so they were
saved again.

The fascination was complete ; and the Abbot's children
in religion revered at a wondering distance an elevation and
a repose of soul which had their source in intimate sustained
communion with the Fountain of all good.

In the midst of these troubles, and on the first of December/
Anselm had to appear before the King ^ in a lawsuit which
concerned the monastery. His Norman neighbours would
seem to have been somewhat perplexed by his notions of
justice, and, failing to comprehend his distaste for the sharp
practice which was at once so familiar and so dear to them-
selves, to have mingled some little amazement with the
respect which those notions could scarcely fail to command.
They were astonished to find that he would never allow his
tenants to compass a dishonest object under cover of legal
right, override the decalogue by a congeries of contumes, or
convert the chief of the cardinal virtues into a synonym for
the legerdemain of pettifoggers. But if a case came into
court in which Abbot Anselm believed that right was on his
side, his conduct was still more perplexing. Then, whilst the
opposite side plied arguments deemed miracles of forensic
skill by a crowd of approving auditors, who, after following
with rapt attention the cunning intertexture of legal threads,
watched with growing applause the apparition of the design,
as little by little it stood forth to view — whilst all this went on,
Anselm, * not troubling himself about that sort of thing, would
discourse to any who chose to lend him a hearing out of the
Gospel or some other part of Holy Scripture, or set forth

Montfort, who was professed in 1079 and succeeded Anselm in the abbacy. He
was a' great-nephew of Roger de Beaumont. I have already mentioned a brother-
in-law of Roger de Beaumont as having been professed in 1077.

' Ep. ii. I.

2 Not, of course, in his quality of King of England, nor in his quality of Duke
of Normandy, but as Count of Brionne.

248 ABBOT ANSELM'S CLAUSTRAL SECLUSION.

something for the forming of good manners ; or if he had
no one to Hsten to him, sweetly reposing in heart's purity,
would drop asleep.' So he slept, and then, when the other
side had finished, awaking, would listen to a briefly worded
summary of the argument. Enough : he rose, spoke a few
short phrases, and even as he spoke the showy tissue unravelled
of itself and fell to threads.

This is no idle praise. Lanfranc had some years before
broken down before the cunning of the Norman coutumiers ;
and it may even be that Anselm's pleadings in the county
court of Brionne, no less than his discourses in his own cloister
at Le Bee, were the first harbingers of a brighter day, those
for lawyers as these for theologians.

The relentless demands made upon him by a minute,
unflagging care for the intellectual and moral development of
his children in religion one by one may account in great
measure for the scantiness of biographical detail which cha-
racterises this portion of his history. For, delegating the ex-
ternal business of the house to the prior and others whom he
could trust, he made the walls of the cloister, so far as he might
do so, the limit of the sphere in which his energies were
exercised ; and, if we could only contrive to think of him for
a moment as one of those scholarly recluses who seem unable
to live, or move, or breathe beyond their own dear academic
bounds, we should perhaps forgive the spite which has told us
almost nothing of his life for so long an interval. But he was
no such recluse, and we must be satisfied with the sorry con-
solation of reflecting that even had a dozen anecdotes survived
of this period, we should still have the hopeless task before us
of guessing at the strange spell he wielded over his monks
and at the intimacy of his converse with the unseen world.

One night the sacristan,* who slept in the church, and
whose duty it was to call up the house for matins, walked
forth into the cloister, there, no doubt, by stellar observation to

' His name stands eightieth on the list.

A VISION OF LIGHT. 249

ascertain the hour, when, as he passed by the chapter house,
he opened the door and looked in. There stood the abbot,
his arms outstretched in prayer, and his whole form enveloped
in a sphere of dazzling light. Dom Riculf — for that was the
sacristan's name — had never known him in the chapter house
at such a time, and, besides, had no doubt that he was in bed.
In order, however, to assure himself that what he had seen was
illusory, he went up into the dormitory, expecting to find
Anselm there. The abbot's bed was empty. He came down
and went again to the chapter house. Anselm was there,
undoubtedly ; but the luminous globe had vanished. Riculf's
story seems to have excited no surprise, only curiosity as to
the meaning of the portent.

Nor have we the advantage of a voluminous correspond-
ence in our review of Anselm's administration as abbot ; for
fourteen letters written between the years 1079 ^"^ 10()2 can
scarcely be expected to yield an adequate account of so long
a period. Still, some of these fourteen letters are simply
inestimable, for they afford us a glimpse, not indeed of
Anselm's cloister, but of Anselm's heart, and such a
glimpse as makes us jealous of the men he loved. The
following was written shortly before he set out on his second
journey to England, an enterprise undertaken, as I believe,
in the year 1083 : —

* To his loved, his loving, and his longed for William,
brother Anselm, styled Abbot of Le Bee. May he love not
the world, nor the things that are in the world, but enjoy
the love of God, and give God his love.

* I begin by styling him my loved and my loving one,
in reply to the request he makes of my love.

* A soul dear to my soul has, through the medium of a
letter all flagrant and all fragrant with affection, asked
me, as token of my affection, for a letter of solace. What
is sweeter or more agreeable to affection, or what greater

250 SUPERNATURAL LOVE.

solace has it, than affection ? How, then, can I better
solace you in your love for me than by writing to tell
you that my soul's love for you is such that my heart will
know no consolation, and my longing for you be all
unappeased, unless I have you for my own? Truth to
say, when you ask me for my affection with such fervour
and such importunity of affection, you do more than incline
me to love you ; you oblige me to long for you. Your
affection for me makes you crave my handwriting for your
comfort ; mine for you makes me desire your presence for
my joy. So, then, if you do not wish to do violence to my
heart, satisfy the longing you have taken such pains and
made such effort to kindle.

* O dear soul, how can you tell me that you love me,
and yet suffer my heart to break from love of you } If the
same flame burns in you as burns in me, then your soul and
mine must needs be melting with one and the same desire.
But how can you really wish for my affection without
returning me your own } Be not cruel, therefore, to your
soul and mine ; but come and console your soul and mine.

* And when you leave your city be like Lot. Look not
back. Look ahead and learn the way forward ; look not
behind, but forget the way back. So, with the apostle, shall
you forget the things that are behind and reach forward
to those that are before.

* Now I tell you what I mean, and I tell you frankly.
Come, and let pur lives be spent together, if you really wish
us to be a consolation to each other. I might, my dearest
friend, adduce to you numberless places of Holy Writ which
exhort you to despise the world and its concupiscence, if
you were not already familiar with them. But do not for-
get that if we are passing through the false it is only that
we may reach the true. Love not the false if you would
have the true. ... I am going to England before the
middle of Lent, and hope to return at Whitsuntide. . . .

DOM FOLCERAD. 251

' May Almighty God prevent all your wishes and all
your actions with His counsel, and further them with His
help, friend of mine, dearest to my heart' ^

During this his absence in England two kinsmen of his,
Haimo and Raynald by name, came to Le Bee in quest of
him. Their precise relationship to the saintly abbot cannot,
I fear, be ascertained ; but the most probable conjecture
would make them sons of his second cousin, Amadeus H.,
Count of Maurienne and Aosta. They were not, however,
the first relations by blood who had sought him out. When
he was as yet prior a cousin, Dom Folcerad by name, and son,
as I imagine, of Count Gerard of Ensheim, came to Le Bee
begging to be admitted a member of Herlwin's community,
but, whether because his own abbot refused to give him up or
because Herlwin declined to receive him, was obliged to wait
for better days. He came at last, however, and came, I
suspect, as soon as ever Anselm was free to receive him. This,
I make no doubt, was the first name inscribed amongst the
nomina monachorum Becci after Herlwin's death. ^

' Ep. ii. 25.

^ The only name of Anselm's professed monks which is lost to us is that of the
first (No. 138). It is just possible that, now that I know what to look for, I
should see traces of the word Folceradus had I an opportunity of examining the
codex. But it gives me a very lively satisfaction to be able to say that I am con-
vinced that the missing name is that of Anselm's kinsman.

Folcerad, in the time of Anselm's priorate, was a monk — where I cannot say,
perhaps in the very convent into which Anselm in his boyhood had himself sought
admittance. He came to Le Bee to see his kinsman, and spared no effort to obtain
release from his present home and country, so as to live under Anselm's rule, but in
vain. William the Conqueror wrote twice to the good man's temporal ruler, pro-
bably the Count of Maurienne and Aosta, and Herlwin wrote twice to his abbot,
but in vain. He went back in the company of a Dom Rodulf or Rudolf — the
Rodulf or Rudolf, I suspect, who accompanied Anselm from Aosta when he left
his home (No. 70), My owm opinion is that Herlwin was not very zealous in the
business (^Ep. 1, 46). Be that as it may, some time afterwards there came a
verbal message from Dom Folcerad's abbot consenting to his monk's migration ;
but Anselm, mistrusting it, wrote to him to ascertain the truth. He does not in
his letter represent himself as abbot ; and, what is still more remarkable, makes
no mention of Herlwin ; but speaks in general terms of the abbates of Le Bee — or
we should say, 'the abbot, whoever he may be.' 'Si ergo Deus posuit in corde

252 DOM PETER.

And, besides Folcerad, there was another kinsman, a
certain cousin Peter, whom Anselm remembered as quite a
little boy in the old days, and who seems no sooner to have
heard of his succession to the abbacy than he hastened to
submit himself to his rule. It is his name, I imagine, which
stands immediately before that of William de Montfort.

But to return to Haimo and Raynald. The Abbot was in
England when, in the spring of 1083, they found their way to
Le Bee. On hearing of their arrival he wrote : —

* When I heard, souls dearest to my soul, that you had
come so far to see me, I cannot tell you how my soul was
deluged with joy, how the blossom of my hope for you
expanded, how my desire after you, always ardent, broke
out into flames of impatience. Already, my dearest cousins,
do my eyes long to see you face to face, already do my
arms stretch forth to clasp you, and my lips are impatient
for your kiss, and all that is left to me of life yearns to have
you for companions, that my soul may rejoice with you in
the fulness of the joy of the life to come. . . . Hope
alternates with prayer, and prayer with hope, that He who
has brought you so far will finish what He has begun
according to my desire. But meanwhile my desire urges
me on ; my heart from its fulness compels me to speak.
O taste, my dearest loved ones, O taste and see that the

vestro ut prsefatum filium vestrum sub abbatum ejus regimine penitus concedatis '
{Ep. ii. 20). I suspect, therefore, that this letter of Anselm's was written
after Herlwin's death and before his own consecration.

It may be asked, however, Did Folcerad really change his monastery after all ?
A very pertinent question, to which I am happy to be able to give a very pertinent
answer. In Ep. iii. 25 Anselm, then Archbishop of Canterbury, writes to Dom
Boso, ' Domnus Folcheradus consobrinus noster .... olim factus est monachus
Becci.'

Now it is evident that he had not been living at Le Bee for some time ; and
Boso is presumed to know nothing of his ever having done so. He must, there-
fore, have left before 1089, when Boso made his profession.

We must, therefore, find him a place somewhere before No. 261. And as every
place but No. 138 has some other name, his must be No. 138, just where Anselm's
letter (ii. 20) to his abbot would have led us to expect to find it.

'Die, O BONE JESU, CORDIBUS EORUM: 253

Lord is sweet ! for how sweet He is you can never know so
long as the world is sweet to you. . . .

* O how my love for you struggles for utterance ! how
it longs to shape itself into words ! but no words will do.
How much there is it wants to say, but my time is too brief
and my sheet too small. Do Thou speak for me, O good
Jesus ; speak to their hearts, else the ear hears in vain ;
speak to them ; tell them to leave all and follow Thee ;
promise them that when Thou comest to judge they shall
sit with Thee and judge with Thee. . . . If they hold to the
world, what grief and sorrow will be mine ! I am writing
too much, but a love past bound compels me. My loved
and longed for, farewell ; and stay where you are— stay
never to go. Let me hear of your good beginning before I
come, and when I come find you there.' '

One scarcely knows which the more to admire in all this
— the writer's enthusiastic devotion for a life of sacrifice and
penance, or his tremendous pathos of affectionate appeal to
the hearts he longs to win. The die, O bone Jesu, eordibus
eorum is the perfection of written rhetoric.

Meanwhile he was growing uneasy about his friend William.
William was a man of war ; William's brother had gone to
the land of the Orient to do battle with the infidel, and William
was all eager to follow him and fight by his side. But
Anselm's unearthly love for a soul so dear rebelled against
this, and he wrote him a letter, the full beauty of which can
only be discerned upon comparing it with its predecessor,
written before he started for England. Its very superscrip-
tion resumes the strain of plaintive desire with which the first
missive ended, and the two ideas of affection and longing
which ran through the first are here worked up into a passage
of delicious melancholy. But this is suddenly arrested ;
remonstrances and reproaches take its place, then after a

> Ep. ii. 28,

254 A LETTER OF REMONSTRANCE.

while the cry of desire is heard again, and the whole ends in a
melody of hope.

* Such is the affection for your soul, O loved and longed
for, with which is has pleased Almighty God to enthral me,
that, between her yearning for your salvation and her fear
lest your salvation be imperilled, my own soul will not rest.
I am tormented day and night on your account. And,
blessed be God, may He yet take from you your hatred of
your soul, as He has given me this love for it. Bear with
me, dear friend ; bear with me, for I love you. . . . Love
for your soul urges mine, and her love for you will not
suffer mine to let you hate that soul, the love of which is
part of herself. . . . You, my dearest one — love grieves to
say it, but grief loves to do so —you — may God forfend it —
you are the enemy of a soul that is dear to mine ; you are
the enemy of your own soul ; for he that loves iniquity
hates his soul. Believe me, it is iniquity upon iniquity
whither you are hurrying with such eager zest, my loved
one. It is iniquity upon iniquity to which the world's
headlong torrent is bearing you away, my desired one.
Yes ; war with all its cruel riot, what is it but iniquity .?
And the vain world's ambition is nothing but iniquity. And
the never-satisfied greed of empty goods and hollow
honours is all iniquity. And it is after these — ah ! I see
him, and, ah ! how I love him and long to hold him back —
I see him hurrying away, and the cunning foe deludes him
on. O God, lover and rescuer of souls, let not the enemy
carry off Thy servant !

'You say, my longed for brother, " It is not these things
I love, but my brother who is involved in them ; and I am
all impatience to be involved in them with him, that I may
help and shield him." Oh woe ! Oh woeful grief of the
woeful error of men ! Why, mortal, why do you not rather
say, " I love not these things, but Christ my God ; and so

THE REMONSTRANCE HEEDED. 255

I flee away from them, and hie me to Him, that He may
help and shield me." What ! When you hear the crash
of a world falling on your brother to his destruction,
why do you do despite to the call of Christ, and run away
to be crushed at your brother's side ? How is one dying
man to help and shield another ? How can one worm
help and shield another ? How can you save your brother
from being crushed and confounded ? Tell me, my brother,
while you are helping and shielding him, who will help
and shield you ? Will God do so, the God whom you
take less pains to follow than you do to follow your
brother ? . . .

' Have done with the Jerusalem that is ; it is no vision
of peace, but of disaster. Leave alone the treasures of
Constantinople and Babylon — they are only meant for
blood-stained hands — and set out on a pilgrimage to the
heavenly Jerusalem, the vision of peace. There shall you
find treasures that are prepared for those that do not
despise them.' ^

Enough. The letter did its work ; William's name stands
immediately before Haimo's, and the Abbot must have
professed the two soon after his return to his monastery.
Not for nothing had he poured out his soul on parchment.

Nor was it only or chiefly in writing that he knew how
to make such heart to heart appeals. It was by the
instrument of speech that he worked the most wonderfully
upon others ; and the dic^ O bone Jesu, in his letter
to Haimo and Raynald recalls a similar phrase in a story
recorded concerning Dom Boso.

This young man, the son of honest parents near Rouen,
had already gained distinction as a profound and acute
thinker, when, at the age of twenty-three, and in the
year 1089, he found his way to Le Bee in quest of the

> Ep. ii. 19.

256 DOM BOSO.

Abbot's assistance in solving some metaphysical problem
which he could neither unravel nor dismiss from thought.
The heedless youth did what so many had already done —
fell a victim to the fascination of the Abbot's sanctity, and
soon returned to the wooded valley and the convent by the
babbling beck. Nor only so ; he brought with him an elder
brother and a younger, whose names together with his were
soon entered on the boards.^

At once fervent and punctilious in the discharge of a
monk's primary duty, the divine office — or, as it was otherwise
called. Divine service, the service of the Lord, God's work —
Boso soon won the special regard of Anselm, and rewarded
his care of him by a rapid growth in virtue and an unremit-
ting application to intellectual pursuits. The enemy of souls,
perceiving this, assailed him with some terrible temptation,
which, after threatening him with distraction for some days,
brought him at last covered with shame to the feet of the
Abbot. He told the whole story. Anselm listened, turned
on him a look of ineffable sympathy, said three words,
' Deus consulat tibi,' and dismissed him. In a few moments
the tumult ceased, the clouds vanished, and light and peace
resumed their reign. Boso never forgot the * Deus consulat
tibi ; ' and as he told the story, or at least as Eadmer tells
the story for him, it would seem as if he had no more to
say. But others inform us that he was no sooner gone than
the Abbot flew to the church, and, stretched at the foot of one
of the altars, poured forth the prayers and tears that obtained
for the poor youth the grace of this instantaneous and per-
manent cure.

We owe the preservation of this story in its two forms
to two accidents. Boso knew Eadmer towards the close
of Anselm's life, hence the one ; and, as in time he became
Abbot of Le Bee, it was proper to write his Life when he was
gone, hence the other. But, after all, Boso was only one
> 260, 261, and 262 in the l^omina Mouachorum.

DOM OLIVER TALVAS. 257

of the many who — most of them young, innocent, enthu-
siastic ; some, like Oliver Talvas, in middle life and not unhurt
by the world ; a few decrepit and weary of life — had recourse
to him, the greater number to find rest with him ; some few, as
it would appear, to turn away irresolute or defer till it was too
late. One of these last, though indeed he may have been
professed elsewhere, was a certain Henry, to whom the
following lines were written : —

' However much glory, my dear friend, you may have
acquired in the world, ponder on its end, and in that end
ask yourself what profit is there, and what reward ? And,
on the other hand, think how bright is the hope of those
who tread the world's glory under their feet. Perhaps you
reply that monks are not the only people that are saved.
Nothing could be more true. Still, who are in the surer
and higher state, those who try to love God only, or those
who wish to link two loves together, the love of God and
the love of the world t But perhaps somebody will say
that the monastic state is not free from danger. He that
says this, why, ah why, does he not think what he is
saying ? Think, rational soUl, think and say, is it reason-
able counsel, seeing there is danger everywhere, delibe-
rately to linger where the danger is greatest ? Certain it is
that if he who tries to have no other love than God keeps
his resolution to the end, his bliss is secure ; but if he who
chooses to love the world does not give up his resolution
before the end, his bliss is either lost or uncertain or
impaired. . . . But many say God is more angry with a
sinning monk than with another man, because his fall is
greater. Nothing can be more true, so long as the monk
remains in sin. But be sure that, when he comes back
repenting, God clasps him in the embrace of a kinder and
more intimate love if he returns to his old resolve than
one who is not a monk and does not make the same

VOL. I. S

258 THE IDEAL CLOISTER,

resolve. ... If, then, it is better for innocent souls to
come to the monastic life than to stay away, and for
the penitent to return to it than to remain aloof, why do
you delay } Should you be taken out of this life whilst
you are hesitating, your loss would be irreparable. Ah,
my dearest friend, much could I tell you of the height and
security, the repose and joy, of the monastic life, but that
would make my letter too long; but come, come quickly
to so great a good, for by no other good will you more
effectually attain your highest good. I have known more
than one promise and then delay ; and death has removed
them, and they could not complete the work which none
but themselves hindered them from doing, could not even
begin what they were purposing to do. I greatly fear
this in your case ; but God avert it from you, my dearest
friend. Farewell, and do not delay.' ^

Henry's name is not in the list of Anselm's religious.

But this letter reminds me that he had a way all his
own of illustrating to his novices the characteristics, the
difficulties, and the merits of the monastic state ; and one of
the tenderest of his many quaint similitudes is that in which
he compares a monk to one who has made oath of fealty
to an earthly superior. Should he have the misfortune to
fall into sin, his very profession was a pledge to him of
the Divine commiseration. He was like the vassal who
could say to his offended lord, 'My lord, I confess that I
have done very wrong and that I am bound by my promise
of fealty. But, since I am sorry for the wrong, must I fare
worse than those who have refused you their fealty and have
offended you besides } The reason why I wanted to be your
servant was that, should I ever do wrong, you, instead of
judging me as a stranger and another's, might correct me
as your own.'

1 Ep. ii. 29.

THE REALISED IDEAL. 259

How can we think but with envy of the hundred and
sixty monks, conquests through fifteen years of a love so
exquisitely gentle, so heroically strong ? Happy indeed
should we have been had it been ours to see the play of those
refined and sensitive features, to hear the intonations of that
eloquent voice, and to prove the sympathy that drew so
many, old men, young men, children, to share his super-
natural life of penance, labour, and prayer. Happy, thrice
happy, they who were so blest !

26o

CHAPTER IV.

DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR — SUCCESSION OF
WILLIAM RUFUS.

When, in the summer of 1087, William the Conqueror was
carried mortally hurt to Rouen, he made it his chief care to
prepare for another world. Anselm was summoned to Court,
and a lodging provided for him near the room where the
King lay. But scarcely was he there before he in his turn
fell suddenly and dangerously ill. Complete repose was
declared necessary for him, and he was carried across the
Seine to his priory at Sotteville, or, as it was then called,
Hermentrndis Villa.

The Conqueror's life was drawing to its close, and if, as
we review that marvellous career, we seek for something
which shall be in keeping with his reverence for Anselm and
his desire for Anselm's aid in this emergency, our search will
not be all in vain. His zeal for the reformation of manners
among the secular clergy ; his resolution that great ecclesi-
astical preferments should not be debauched by men of
scandalous life ; his munificent endowment of religious houses
and the encouragement he offered to the like generosity in
his barons by legal confirmation of their numerous and
ample donations to sanctuaries of piety and learning — these
all exhibit William the Conqueror in a more welcome light
than measures of severity forced upon him by his acquisition
of the crown of England and acts of cruelty suggested by
his determination to ensure his hardly won conquest. But,
after all, these measures and these acts, in so far as they

THE 'S OCTET AS' OF CLUNY. 261

deserved condemnation, were deplored by their author
himself, deplored explicitly, unreservedly, and publicly before
he passed away ; and it is in any case worthy of reflection that
the Norman conquest was mercy itself as compared with
all previous invasions of our shore, and chivalry itself, both
in its pretensions and in its acts, as compared with some
at least that have succeeded it.

Formed by nature to govern others, and skilled in the
art of governing, William the Conqueror was surpassed by no
prince of his age in the due use of such moral appliances
as are not beneath the dignity of a ruler who is other than
indifferent to the respect of his subjects. His majestic mien
and quelling glance were no symptoms of rebellion against
that Divine Kingship of which his own was but a faintest
shadow ; they were rather the appropriate accessories to a
grandeur and strength of character which distinguished him
from his predecessors in the duchy, and to a true nobility
of soul wherewith nature had marked him out as the first
of his race to wear the crown of royal sovereignty ; and his
subjects wondered that a prince in many respects so unlike
the Charlemagnes and the Alfreds of a past age and the
Roberts and Edwards of his own, a prince who never wrote
hymns or wore sackcloth, should, nevertheless, be so devout,
so chaste, and, in the general tenour of his life, so mindful
of his own responsibility, so mindful of the majesty of God.
An instance of this last characteristic may not be out of
place here.

It was some time after his conquest of England that,
penetrated with a profound respect for the Cluniac reform
which at Jumieges, at Fecamp, and in the monastery of
St. Ouen had already done much for Normandy, he not
only wished it to be extended into our island, but craved
admission into its societas. His request was granted ; and
contemporary writers tell us that when the monk who had
acted as his proxy in the business wa's ushered into his

262 THE CHURCH OF ST. GERVAIS, ROUEN.

presence, he instantly rose from his seat, doffed his head gear,
and bowed himself to the ground with as much reverence
as if an angel had come to him from heaven. His lords
stood dumb with surprise, deeming it a strange thing that
the neck that rarely bent should be thus humbled. But
when the monk had retired, and they were already set on
asking why, without any visible reason, why before a mere
disciple of St. Benedict who carried in his hand nothing that
could claim such homage, he had thus lowered his royal
majesty, 'Wonder not,' he said, 'that I bowed down so
reverently ; for the occasion obliged me to do what I judged
suitable to it. Never as yet have I received such a boon
as this. Think not that even when the crown of this realm
was given me I received an honour that may compare with
this. All things that I possess here below will have an end
as surely as they had a beginning ; they were given me, and
I shall leave them all behind. But heaven and its glory
are eternal, and of heaven and its glory have I now
received an earnest in being united with the sacred society
of Cluny.' ^

The church of St. Gervais, on the western outskirt of the
city of Rouen, possesses an historic interest to which the
vulgar herd of English travellers are appropriately indifferent.
Deep buried below its choir and accessible by means of a
trap-door and a precipitous flight of steps, there lies a sub-
terranean structure, whose architectural peculiarities suggest
some church in the Roman catacombs. It is the cradle of
the Church of Normandy. In it St. Mellon was buried ; in
or over it were long preserved the relics of St. Gervasius
sent from Milan by St. Ambrose himself; and although its

' Migne, clix. 923. The account adds that in acknowledgment of this favour
the Conqueror presented the abbot and monks of Cluny with a cope nearly all of
gold ; scarcely anything was to be seen in it but gold, or amber, or patterns in
pearl wrought into the texture, or rows of precious stones ; and it had a fringe
of little gold bells all along the lower border. The Queen on the same occasion
sent a chasuble, so stiff by reason of its magnificence that it could not be folded.

ANSELM'S SUBSTITUTE AT THE DEATH-BED. 263

metropolitan honours had been transferred to a church within
the walls of Rouen long before the eleventh century, still the
venerable crypt was not forgotten, the Conqueror's grand-
father committing its custody to a colony of monks from
Fecamp, who built their choir over it. In no more appro-
priate spot, then, than this priory of St. Gervais could a
Christian Duke of Normandy wish to breathe his last sigh ;
and it was by his own desire that, when the noise and
tumult of Rouen had grown irksome to him, William the
Conqueror was transported thither. There, as Orderic in-
forms us, Gilbert, Bishop of Lisieux, Gontard, Abbot of
Jumieges, and several other prelates, made unremitting efforts
and took most anxious pains for both the spiritual and the
bodily welfare of the sufferer. The bishop was none other
than the Gilbert Maminot who consecrated one of the altars
at Le Bee in 1077 ; the abbot was a Cluniac monk, and,
amongst the great Churchmen of Normandy, second only to
Anselm in reputation for sanctity. No doubt he had been
summoned to supply Anselm's place.

As the prostrate prince surveyed the chamber, his keen
and practised eye, made keener by suffering and informed
by illumination from the eternity he was nearing, read the
thought that was uppermost in the hearts of the men that
hung about him. When was the near, uncertain, perhaps ter-
rible, future to begin .? His children were haggling over the
partition of crown, coronet, and dowry ; his barons trembling
for the fate of their fiefs ; his chaplains forecasting the advent
of an unprincipled successor. We may not, and dare not,
doubt that Gilbert and Gontard did their best, the one for his
body, the other for his soul ; or that the latter was bold
enough, strong enough, tender enough, to turn a deaf ear
to the coming storm and attempt the supreme endeavour
of taking that lonely soul into his charge and bearing it
company, tranquil and undisturbed, to the bourn of the
cleansing fires. To die alone is Heaven's behest for each

264 THE DYING KING'S LOVE FOR ANSELM.

of us ; but it was the peculiar lot of William the Conqueror
to be deprived of the one man in Normandy, who, as he
knew without the faintest shadow of a doubt, possessed all
the heroism, all the tenderness, and all the wisdom that were
required to vanquish to the very uttermost the attendant trials
of such a change as the present. And as he lay there racked
with the fierce pain of his inner wound, he let his thoughts
fly evermore to his friend down at Sotteville, and missed
no opportunity of evincing an attachment that had in it
all the intimacy of a fraternal love. Whatever of choicest
fruit for the assuaging of his thirst, or of carefully prepared
delicacy for keeping up the spark of life, was brought to the
King, he sent half of it across the Seine to Abbot Anselm.

On Wednesday, the eighth day of September, his two
sons, William and Henry, were summoned to the sick room.
There the dying prince, after taking such order for the
distribution of his dominions as he deemed best and wisest,
indited a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose
hands the destinies of England were soon to lie, and
causing it to be sealed with his royal and ducal seal,^ handed
it to the elder of the two, and bade him take ship for
England without delay. Whatever reluctance William the
Red may have felt in obeying such an injunction was over-
come by the fond parent, who kissed him, gave him his
blessing, and hurried him away.

The pain which had tortured the royal sufferer relaxed its
grip at evening, and yielded to the dull anodyne of mortifica-
tion. Gilbert Maminot knew the meaning of this, and
whispered it to Gontard ; but bishop and abbot deemed it
wise to postpone the administration of the last rites till the
morning, and prepared to keep watch. All through the

^ The seal need not be described. Abbot Herman of St. Martin's, Toiu-nay,
writes like one who had seen it. 'Guillelmus duos principatus obtinuit, existens
comes Northmannorum et rex Anglorum, ita ut in sigillo suo ex ima parte sederet
super equum ut comes, in alia super thronum cum sceptro ut rex.'

ANSELM'S 'HYMNI DE SANCTA MARIA: 265

night the attendants, now slumbrously awake and now fit-
fully dozing, were undisturbed by start or cry of pain. A
waxen torch cast its mellow flicker on the walls of the room ,
and by the lessening of its bulk marked for any who might
languidly regard it the steady lapse of the monotonous hours,
for no bell rang for matins in the adjacent church ; all was
hushed and kindly still. And who shall say how the sufferer
was employed? Yesterday he made a full and detailed
avowal to children and attendants of the errors of a career
eventful from the first. Is memory now reweaving all this
chequered panorama ? Or does he regretfully yearn for the
friend who has been so strangely taken from him ? Or is it
Anselm's midnight hymn that he is mentally reciting ? —

Light that shinest through the gloom,
Offspring of the Virgin's womb,
Roll the darkness all away.
Clothe us in Thy glorious day. ^

Or is he already entering on those mysterious regions
where some subtler faculty than the thought that frames itself
in speech is called into exercise ; regions where sight and
knowledge are evolved, of which present sight and present
knowledge are but a rudimentary beginning } Who shall say ?

The day broke ; the growing light recalled him from his

' ' Lux quae luces in tenebris
Ex alvo natus Virginis,
Nostram noctem nos exue,
Diemque tuam indue.

' Maria Dei thalamus,
Posce te venerantibus,
Virtutibus ut splendeant,
Quos reatus obtenebrant.

* Gloria tibi, Domine,
Nato de Sancta Virgine ;
Regnanti, victo funere,
Cum Patre et Sancto Spiritu.'

There are eight such pairs of verses, each pair followed by the same doxology.
They are assigned to the several ecclesiastical hours, compline included.

266 THE LAST WORDS OF THE CONQUEROR.

reverie ; the great bell at the cathedral down in Rouen
began to toll, and the sound floated up through the clear
air, soft and full. He asked what it meant. * Sire,' was the
reply, * it is the bell for prime at St. Mary's.' * Then he raised
his eyes to heaven in a transport of devotion, and, stretching
forth his hands, exclaimed, "To my Queen, God's holy
Mother, Mary, I yield myself; and may she by her holy
prayers reconcile me to her dearest Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ." '

The arms dropped upon the coverlet, and the jaw fell.
He had not received the last unction, and his attendants
had made sure that God would not let him die without it.
This was a premonitory seizure, but certainly not death.
And so, taken off their guard, they did what they had been
rehearsing — lifted him from his couch to stretch him on the
floor, for only thus might a Christian die —when, even as they
did so, the truth flashed on them. Terrible always, he was
worse than terrible in this new mood of. his. They had
thought him their consecrated dying king ; it was an un-
anointed corpse they were handling !

Panics like these are instantaneous, and in an age like
that were irresistible. Bishop, abbot, and earl quailed under
the shock, and, their reason overborne by dismay and
horror, flew from the chamber of the dead ! *

William Rufus was at Touque when the news overtook
him. Accompanied by Robert Bloet, a chaplain of the late
King's, he crossed the Channel and made with all speed for

* This seems to me to be, on the whole, the right account of an event which
has by some writers been invested with additional and unnecessary horror, and it
is supported by Eadmer's words, ' mox ut in terram spiritum exhalaturus positus
est.' Orderic's rhetorical apostrophe has been somewhat overcoloured by Dean
Church in the process of transference from Latin into English. Spoliatus is not
exactly ' foully stripped ; ' and the time that elapsed before the composure of the
corpse for burial was not two solar hours, but the interval between prime and
terce, during which the monks, uninformed of what had happened, were in the
chapter house. And certainly I can find no authority wh itever for the Dean's
assertion that * the servants stripped the very corpse. '

ARCHBISHOP LANFRANCS GRIEF. 267

Canterbury, where he found the Archbishop. The news well-
nigh broke the heart of the venerable prelate ; but he re-
covered self-possession with more than the energy of ninety
years, and soon addressed himself to the task that now
devolved upon him.

England was without a king. Whom, then, were the
bishops and barons of England, with the concurrence of the
Primate, to elect for their sovereign .-* Or whom, if elected
without the Primate's concurrence, would it soon be his duty
either to accept as worthy or to reject as unworthy of the
crown } The Conqueror's letter, much as Lanfranc might
respect its contents, could not release him from the obligation
of proposing, or, if not of proposing, then of accepting, the
most eligible candidate for the throne. His choice lay
between the Conqueror's three sons, Robert, William, and
Henry. Robert was the eldest, William had been recom-
mended to his preference, and Henry could boast that he
was born in the purple.

As to the Conqueror's refusal to make an absolute bequest
of the crown, it might well have been dictated by prudence,
even if piety had failed to suggest it ; for the bishops and
barons, if old constitutional usage was to be observed, were
entitled to lay claim to its disposition, and the theory was
not as yet obsolete that Kings of England were the elected
rulers of their people.^ Physical inability to take the field,
intellectual incapacity for personal government, or moral
unfitness to be the leader of Christian men, would be certain
to entail such results as human wisdom, at least in England,
had not as yet contrived means for averting. The clergy,
therefore, and the nobility would not be likely to neglect
their immemorial rights ; and amongst the former body
there was one whose judgment as to moral fitness was pretty

^ Not, that is to say, set up by a clique, nor even by the citizens of London,
but solemnly chosen by a bond fide election, in which the lords spii-itual, the lords
temporal, and the commons took their legitimate part.

268 ARCHBISHOP LANFRANC'S MISGIVINGS.

sure to be accepted with an implicit confidence. Occupant of
a chair more ancient than the throne of England, and de-
pository of an authority whose limits stretched far wider
than the boundaries of the realm, the Archbishop of
Canterbury was the most influential and most powerful of all
prelates in Christendom, with one obvious exception ; and it
would even seem as though long use had given the successor
of St. Augustine of Canterbury the same sort of prerogative
in the election of Kings of England as was enjoyed by the
Sovereign Pontiff in the election of Kings of Germany. It
need not, therefore, surprise us to learn from Eadmer that
without Lanfranc's consent it was impossible for William
Rufus to become King of England.^

Lanfranc hesitated. Henry's supporters, if indeed he had
any, must have been too few for him to concern himself much
about that prince, and the choice lay between Duke Robert
and William the Red. Robert may have been vain, silly,
worthless, and sure to involve his subjects in misery; but
William the Red might prove heartless, headstrong, and de-
spotic ; and, after all, the separation of the kingdom from the
duchy was a contingency not to be thought lightly of by
men who in that case would find themselves the vassals of
two rival lords.

But Lanfranc had misgivings in the moral order as well
as in the political ; and so persistent was his reluctance to
consecrate the Red Prince that the latter, rather than lose
the prize which already seemed to be escaping him, was fain
to promise, under oath, others swearing with him as his
sureties, that, should he be made king, he would in everything
observe justice, equity, and mercy throughout the realm,
defend the peace and liberty of the Church against all men

' ' Lanfrancus, sine cujus assensu in regnum adscisci nullatenus potuit ' (clix.
361c). Thus Orderic's account of the illegitimacy of Harold's accession is not
only that he was not duly elected, but that he was consecrated by an archbishop
who had been suspended by the Pope— not only, that is to say, was Harold an
intruder ; the sacred oil had been poured on him by an intruder.

THE NEW KING. 269

and in all things, and invariably comply with the Archbishop's
precepts and counsels.^

It was not, therefore, until the nineteenth day after his
father's death that William Rufus was consecrated King of
the English.

The first act of his reign was in keeping with the gene-
rosity of his early, if indeed it did not presage the prodigality
of his later, years. He threw open the royal treasury at
Winchester, and bringing out to the day its accumulated
hoard, gave to some of the chief ecclesiastical establish-
ments ten golden marks, to others six, and five silver
shillings to every ecclesia villce. He further sent into each
county the sum of a hundred pounds for distribution among
the poor, and displayed his piety towards his fond, and
perhaps too partial, father by lavishing precious stones, as
well as the precious metals, upon his sepulchral monument
at Caen.

William of Malmesbury, whose praise is perhaps elegance
of style rather than severe accuracy of record, gives the fol-

' This was a gratuitous promise made to gain the Primate's consent, and must
not be confounded with the coronation oath. The latter was, no doubt, identical
with that taken by the Kings of England before the Conquest. What that was
may be learnt from the following transcript from Archbishop Robert's Benedictio-
nariuni preserved at Rouen : —

' Incipit consecratio regis.

' Rex autem cum consecrandus fuerit de conventu seniorum ducatur per mantis

h duobus principibus ad basilicam, choris interim hanc antiphonam cantantibus,

duobiis tamen episcopis initiantibus, Firmetur manus tua et exaltetur dextera tua,

justitia et judicium preparatio sedis tuae, misericordia et Veritas precedent faciem

tuam. Gloria, p. et f. et s.s. Reveniens ad ecclesiam prosternat se coram altari

et ymnizetur Te Deum Laudamus. Quo ymnizato erigatur de solo et ab episcopis

et plebe electtis hcec triplicia jura ei se7^attirii7n promittat: Hsec tria populo

christiano et mihi subdito in Christi promitto nomine, in primis ut ecclesia dei et

omnis populus christianus veram pacem nostro arbitrio in omni tempore servabo ;

aliud, ut rapacitates et omnes iniquitates omnibus gradibus interdicam ; tertium,

ut in omnibus judiciis equitatem et misericordiam precipiam ut mihi et vobis

indulgeat suam misericordiam clemens et misericors deus qui vivit et regnat.

* His peractis otnnes dicunt Amen.

Hie sequanttir orationes ab episcopis,^

^c. &c. &c.

Vjo CHARACTER OF THE NEW KING.

lowing account of William Rufus : — * He was conspicuous for
a hauteur of character, which in the lapse of time degenerated
into excessive harshness. The change was slow and gradual,
and so stealthy was the inroad of vice into his bosom that
virtue was already driven out before he himself perceived the
change. The world was long in doubt as to what turn, what
permanent direction, his character would take at last. At
first, and while Archbishop Lanfranc was still alive, he
shunned all that was wrong, and men hoped to find in him
the very pink and model of a king. Upon the Primate's death
the balance hung for a while all too equally poised, and
dipped irresolutely, now on the side of virtue, now on that of
vice ; but in the latter part of his reign the love of good
waxed finally cold in him, and an undergrowth of ill ripened
quickly and grew to seed. More than this, he was not so
much liberal as a spendthrift, his pride was a supercilious
disdain, and his severity degenerated into cruelty. May I
venture, pace majestatis regice, not to conceal the truth } The
truth is, he feared God but little, and men not at all. ... In
his more public intercourse with others he held himself erect,
his face swelling with importance ; his eye flashed threaten-
ingly, and you stood pierced by its glance ; whilst, affecting
a rigour that was not his own, he made you tremble as he
spoke, so fierce was the tone of his voice. So far as we may
venture to conjecture, the apprehension of straitened means
made him unduly fond of lucre, and suspicion of other men's
unfaithfulness unduly prone to severity. At table and in his
private intercourse he was easy and agreeable ; he was very
fond of raillery, and knew how to veil the recital of his own
peccadilloes under the disguise of such a graceful verbiage as
at once mitigated the odium of the offence and diverted the
attention of his hearers to his skill in innuendo.'

Such is William of Malmesbury's account in the 'Gesta
Regum.' In the ' Gesta Pontificum,' however, he so far rectifies
it as to give us to understand that the hopeful period of William's

'WHO CAN KEEP ALL HIS PROMISES f 271

reign came to a close immediately, or almost immediately,
upon his settlement in the throne, some seven or eight months
after his accession, and not on Lanfranc's death — in the early
summer, that is to say, of 1088, not in the early summer of
1089. And this more accurate statement tallies with that of
Eadmer, who informs us that a change in William from good
to ill, and all that that change implied and involved, accelerated
Lanfranc's end; not that Lanfranc's end invited William to
swerve from a course of rectitude hitherto pursued. An
occasion presented itself — what occasion I shall have to
enquire when the proper moment comes for doing so — on
which the Primate, perceiving that the youthful prince had
ventured on a policy irreconcilable with the promises which
had secured him his crown, took him to task in mild and
temperate phrase. William at once flew into a passion ; his
face turned from red to crimson ; his tongue, always too large for
his mouth, became unmanageable, and he spluttered out the
words, 'Who can keep all his promises ? ' The dignity with
which Lanfranc, now more than ninety years of age, received
this affront disinclined the royal boor to attempt a second ;
and a second might have tried too sorely the reticence of the
gentlemen about him. From that day forward, therefore, he,
with sidelong glance of apprehension, tempered some of the
excesses to which the desire of his heart was prompting him ;
but it was remarked that he never again had a kind look for his
monitor.^

' 'Non rectis oculis super pontificem intendere volebat.' One would suppose
at first sight that these words mean ' was never again able to look him in the face ' —
that is to say, from shame — but the passages I am about to quote seem to dis-
courage the idea that he had grace enough left for shame. The first is from
Eadmer (clix. 514), who in his account of his own troubles in Scotland says
that the king of that country, being thoroughly out of humour with him, took all
possible means for annoying and injuring him, and could neither look at him recto
oculo nor listen patiently to what he wanted to say. The second is from a letter
of St. Thomas of Canterbury to Alexander III., in which he quotes the following
words of the King : ' Ipse (filius meus) vos tanta affectione diligit ut aliquem
inimicorum vestrorum recto lumine nequeat intueri' {Ep. 25). In each of these
cases the notion conveyed is that not of shame, but aversion.

272 THE DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP LAN FRANC.

Disappointment, grief, and anxiety soon fretted away the
Primate's attenuated thread of life. * His pertcesus non moras
longas in luce traxit' Enfeebled by slow fever, he consulted
the physicians, who prescribed a remedy which, if it failed to
cure, would very probably kill, and then, fortified with confes-
sion and the life-giving Body and Blood of our Divine Lord,
resigned himself for better or for worse to the rude skill of the
age. It had been misapplied. He passed away on the 28th
of May, 1089,^ and was buried in his magnificent cathedral in
front of the great crucifix.

No sooner was Lanfranc's death announced to the King
than he divulged a scheme, the audacity of which was as yet
without precedent in the history of our country. Its author,
Renouf by name, was the son of a woman whose crimes and
talents were by her scandalised and wondering contemporaries
ascribed to intercourse with the enemy of mankind. To the
fiend, too, as they believed, was she indebted for the loss of
one of her eyes, but not before commerce with a low-born,
inconspicuous priest in the Bessin had destined her to immor-
tality as mother of the most audacious, the most versatile,
and the most unscrupulous of miscreants.

Renoufs education, wherever obtained, had not been of the
highest order, when, as yet a mere boy, he found his way to
the purlieus of the ducal court of Rouen ; but in volubility of
speech and readiness of resource he possessed natural endow-
ments which, recommended by a handsome face and figure,
soon compensated for this deficiency and made him the
admiration and the envy of the grooms, the lackeys, and the
footmen amongst whom he lived.

' I believe a doubt has been raised as to the day of the month on which he
died. The date I have given is confirmed by the necrology of Beaumont-le-Roger
— ' V. Kal, jun. D. Lanfrmiciis archiepiscopus.''

His tomb was opened in 1158 ; witness the following (Cod. Lambeth, 585) :
* De Inventione Lanfranci. Lanfrancus archiepiscopus in tabula plumbea ponderosa
valde inventus, in qua a die primce sepulturse sua; intactis membris mitratus et
spindulatus usque in ilium diem jacuerat annis videlicet Ixix. et aliquot mensibus,
ut in gornalio habetur, '

THE RISE OF RENOUF FLAM BARD. 273

Choosing the clerical profession as his avenue to place, he
in course of time obtained a footing at court, where he carried
himself so arrogantly to the gentlemen em.ployed about the
King that the first suitable sobriqtiet would be sure to cling
to his name. To Robert le Despenser belongs the felicitous
invention of the word Flambard, and Renouf now gloried in a
surname. His first preferment seems to have been the
deanery of Christchurch Twynham, which he held till the
year 1088, when, being made a King's chaplain, ample oppor-
tunity was afforded him for unfolding to his master designs
the execution of which soon convinced the world that his
nickname had been invented by a prophetic inspiration. ' In
very sooth,' cries Orderic, 'he was an ardens fiamma ; he
brought in new ways that cruelly crushed hosts of people
and turned the Church's momentary songs of joy into wailing
and sorrow.'

Taking the Domesday survey for his source of information,
he carved off from all lay estates, whether in English hands
or Norman, so much of them as might be in excess of a
certain area, and doubled or even trebled ^ the sum total of
the revenue derived from the tax on land throughout the
country by the double process of raising the assessment per
hide beyond its legal limit and of fictitiously augmenting
the number of taxable hides through the employment of a
reduced standard of superficial measurement.

There is little need to say that many rich men were im-
poverished and many poor men utterly ruined by these
measures, or that many a little holding which had been
handed down from father to son through long years was con-
fiscated to the Crown, and its wretched occupant mercilessly
evicted, either because the soil refused to yield the exorbitant
charge or because the cultivator was unable to procure it from

» W. M., Gesta Regttm, § 314 ; O. V. iii. 313. I should, perhaps, say
trebled; for William of Malmesbury's words are ' duplum adjiciebat.' The
little I have to say on this subject will be found in the Appendix.

VOL. I. T

274 THE FISCAL SCHEMES OF RENOUF.

other sources. Prayers, remonstrances, threats, were all alike
wasted on Renouf. He quibbled, haggled, bullied, as cir-
cumstances prompted, and after quibbling, haggling, bullying,
to his own heart's content, bore down at last upon his tired
and disheartened victim with such a storm of invective as
extorted what he wanted. But broken hearts and ruined
fortunes were unimportant trifles to the Firebrand, who, on
reporting his successes to the King, was applauded with a
laugh and a chuckle, and the flattering avowal that there was
only one man living who knew how to practise his talents
thus, or who could snap his fingers at mankind and their
hatred, provided only that he pleased his master.

Nor did Church lands escape. It was the ancient custom
of our country that the revenues of a vacant abbey should
be administered by the bishop of the diocese, those of a
vacant see by the archbishop of the province, and disbursed
in the relief of poverty, the building of churches, and other
good works. But that practice had for some thirty years
been superseded by another which committed such revenues
to the custody of the sovereign, in virtue of the privilege
of advocatio granted by Nicholas 11. to the Kings of Eng-
land ; and, since the business of an advocattis was pro-
tection, not administration, the revenues were allowed to
accumulate during a vacancy. Hence in the Conqueror's
time not a penny was touched of the moneys that accrued
to a church between its avoidance and the appointment of a
new incumbent.

Now, what Renouf proposed was, to replace this advocatio
by dominatio ; in other words, to abolish the office of
guardian of the temporalities and establish absolute lordship
in its place. In short, Csesar was to take from God the
things that were God's, and render them to himself. The
reader has not forgotten that William Riifus, on the
convenient but questionable ground that no man can keep
all his promises, had by this time tossed his precoronation

RENOUF'S PROMOTION TO THE EPISCOPATE. 275

oath to the winds. In those days of personal government
the only effective check upon royal tyranny was conscience,
and the only proper person to keep that check in working
order was the Archbishop of Canterbury. But now there
was no Archbishop of Canterbury. What, then, would
happen next ? And next ? But this was not all. As
if it were not enough that the assumption of absolute
lordship over ecclesiastical property should be succeeded
by its natural consequences, the needless prolongation of
vacancies and the confiscation of moneys accruing during
those intervals, two further contrivances were set in operation.
The first of these was that the King should rack the rents by
farming the various sources of revenue to the highest bidder ;
the second, that after prolonging the vacancy to the satisfac-
tion of his caprice he should sell the succession.

Renouf had been William's chaplain since 1088 ; on
Lanfranc's death he was made justicer of the kingdom, and
he already enjoyed, in addition to this, the two offices of
King's procureur and King's receiver, when on Whit Sunday,
the 29th of May, io<^()— pace regies majestatis be it recorded
— he was appointed Bishop of Durham. His acknowledg-
ment of the honour was the sum of a thousand pounds ; but
a thousand pounds could easily be spared from his enormous
savings.

Seated in the chair of St. Cuthbert, whose distinctive
characteristic it was to punish sinners upon their first offence
with equal quickness and severity, our adventurer was for
a season cowed into such a moderation of behaviour as no
influence, human or divine, had ever as yet elicited. But
no sooner had he, after a few very cautious essays, convinced
himself that the saint's resentment might be provoked with
impunity, than he relapsed into his own old ways, and
even went to such lengths of impiety as to violate an
usage which, in the opinion of his contemporaries, was more
sacred than the revenues he had secularised or the shrines he

276 THE LATER DAYS OF RENOUF.

had profaned ; and it was the memorable distinction of
Renouf that he dared to arrest, and with his own hands drag
to punishment, the trembh'ng wretch who had fled to his
cathedral for benefit of sanctuary.

Upon the death of 'his own king' fortune for the first
time frowned on him. One of Henry Beauclerc's earliest royal
acts was to consign him to the Tower of London, where,
however, in consideration, perhaps, of his episcopal character,
he treated him with leniency and even kindness, and gave him
a pecuniary allowance, which, with help from his friends,
enabled him not only to live right sumptuously himself, but
to give his wardens a daily invitation to dinner. It must
have been either on the Feast of Candlemas or on the
morrow, which in iioi was a Sunday, that, having ordered
an unusually copious banquet, he plied these gentlemen with
wine until they were admodum inebriati and fell under the
table. . Now amongst his wine jars was one heavy, not with
the exhilarating juice, but with a stout hempen rope. This
he drew from its hiding place and tied to the mullion of the
window ; then, fastening the episcopal staff to his person, he
got out of the window and let himself down. The rope was
very rough, and he very heavy, so that the flesh on his hands
was laid open to the bones ; Orderic duly remarks that his
lordship had forgotten to assume the episcopal gauntlets.
But this was not all ; the rope was too short, and so — but
dear old Orderic must tell the story — ' gravi lapsu corpulentus
flamen ruit, et, pene conquassatus, flebiliter ingemuit' But
his accomplices had a good horse in readiness ; he flew to the
coast, took ship for Normandy, and landed safe and sound.
His mother was less fortunate. That venerable sorceress
sailed in another vessel, having in charge his money, his
plate, and his other treasure. But her son's dignity failed to
shield her from the infamy which she had incurred as the
devil's confidant, and while the crew, neglecting their proper
duty, tormented her for her witchcrafts, which were many,

RESULTS OF RENOUF'S ADMINISTRATION. 277

they were surprised by pirates, who seized the treasure but
let her go.

Renouf at once became the life and soul of Duke Robert's
enterprise against the new King of England. This service
had an early reward in the preferment of his brother
Foucher to the see of Lisieux ; and on Foucher's death in
1 102 he himself took possession of it in the name of his son
Thomas, a boy of twelve, and for three years governed it non
tit prcBsul sed ut presses}

But I need not further pursue his history ; and it may
suffice to add that he was reconciled to the King soon after
the battle of Tenchebrai, in 1 106, and returned to Durham,
where he died in 1128.^

To return, however, to the ten years that intervened
between Lanfranc's death and Renouf's promotion to the see
of Durham. The frightful traffic in sacred things inaugurated
by William Rufus and his minister brought bad men, and
none but bad men, to the fore ; and public morality was at an
end. * Alas ! alas ! ' cries the Wiltshire monk, * in a few
short years all was changed. There was not a man in office
that had not dishonoured his place by purchase. In every
clerk you saw some petty attorney, and priests were turned
to publicans. Forgive the phrase ; there was not, I mean, a
parish priest who had not taken his cure of souls on farm.
There was not a wretch, whatever his condition, not a mis-
creant, whatever his crime, who, let him but drop a whisper of
profit to the royal purse, failed to obtain a hearing ; and the
bandit could get the halter loosened from his throat by
offisring the King money. The high tone of knightly prowess

* A younger boy had been secured the right of succession. Some interesting
details of this scandal are to be found in the correspondence of St. Yvo of Chartres
{Epp. 153, 154, 157).

2 The famous crosier which he carried with him in his perpendicular escape
from confinement— for I presume it to be the same— was buried with him. S o
much of it as in the course of more than seven centuries could waste had wasted ,
but its iron crook and ferrule were brought to light a few years ago.

278 GENERAL DEBAUCHERY.

was relaxed and lowered ; and hangers-on at court, them-
selves living upon the substance of their rural dependents,
devoured the poor people's little fortunes and took the food
out of their mouths.'

William of Malmesbury wrote for royal readers, and for
young ones. Nevertheless, such is the picture he paints, when,
after turning from the public immorality to that of the court,
he passes from this to the private life of some of its members,
that I draw the curtain over it.

279

CHAPTER V.

ABBOT ANSELM'S THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND.

As William the Conqueror sank to his end Anselm was
already recovering from the illness that had kept him
prisoner at Sotteville. He was thus able to travel as far as
Caen for the funeral of his royal friend.

It may have been during this interval of convalescence
that, whether in dream or in ecstasy matters not, he had a
strange but characteristic vision. He beheld, and lo ! a river
swift and full. That river as it rushed along swept into its
current all the unseemly residues of earth ; and the further it
flowed the muddier and fouler did it seem, till at last it
showed no better than one vast turbulent drain. But on it
rushed, and on, and sucked and carried off whatsoever lay on
its banks ; and men dropped in, and women ; and high and
low dropped in, and floated down and down, irreparably
swept away. 'But how are they to live,' he thought to
himself, * and wherewithal shall they quench their thirst } '
when a voice told him that they lived on the stream and
relished their food. * What ! ' cried he, loathing and horrified.

* Why, no man for very shame could bring himself to drink
such noisomeness.' 'Wonder not,' rejoined his companion.

* What you see is the world, and the men and the women of
the world drop into its current and drift away. But would
you like to behold the true monastic state ?' 'I should,' said
Anselm ; whereupon the guide set him in the quadrangle of
a large and spacious monastery, saying, 'Look around.' He
looked, and lo ! the walls of the cloister round abo ut were

28o THE EASTER OF 1088.

overlaid with glistening silver ; a silvery radiance gleamed on
him whichever way he turned ; whilst the very turf, though it
yielded to the tread and then redressed itself, and showed in
every way a real sward soft and elastic, was yet turf of silver.
And, besides all this, there was such a nameless sober grace
and chastened gaiety about the spot that he was fain to cry,
* Here let me dwell.' To a true monk like Anselm there was
an especially appropriate charm in such a scene ; for, since
heaven was his ultimate home, he must be content that his
monastery, whose every detail was a symbol — the refectory
of reading, the chapter house of self-discipline, the dormitory
of contemplation, the oratory of devotion — that all this fabric
of protection and enclosure set round about the tranquil
sward, the /tortus concliisus of the elect but unbeatified soul,
should be transfigured to a beauty such as this. Not as yet
might he behold the city whose streets are of pure gold, and
all her gates pearls ; and his fairest vision of the cloister
could scarce be fairer than this silvery splendour. So he
cried, ' Here let me dwell' * Be it so,' said the guide ; * but
would you not like a glimpse of real patience V * I should
indeed,' he said, for patience was his dearest aspiration ; * I
should indeed,' he said ; and, as he spoke, guide and vision
vanished.

In the spring of 1088 Anselm paid his third recorded
visit to England in his quality of abbot, landing on our shore
on Mid-Lent Sunday, March 26. He came intending to ask
the new King for a confirmation of the grants of land hitherto
made to his monastery in our island, and hoped to obtain
that favour at the general meeting of the peers at Easter.
He would then inspect his estates and return to Le Bee for
Whitsuntide.

But when Easter came he found but the shadow of such
an assembly as might have been expected to gather round
the prince and share the joys of his first Paschal coronation ;
for the turbulent and mischievous Bishop Odo had tampered

THE WHITSUNTIDE OF 1088. 281

with the barons, and already at Rochester, at Pevensey, at
Tunbridge, at Arundel, at Shrewsbury, at Leicester, and at
Norwich the standard of revolt was unfurled, or, where not
unfurled, unfurling. The King, therefore, begging his visitor
to wait till Whitsuntide, led his troops in all haste to Tun-
bridge, where, after a two days' siege, he received the sub-
mission of its defender, Earl Gilbert, the son of Richard
Fitzgilbert. Six weeks later a campaign, as memorable as
it was brief, was brought to a close under the walls of
Rochester.

There is little need to say that the miscarriage of Bishop
Odo's enterprise was mainly due to the indolence of the
Duke of Normandy and to the help given William by his
native subjects. But when the prelate and his adjutants,
Eustace of Boulogne and Robert of Bellesme, on returning to
Normandy, told the Duke who it was that had conciliated
the King's clemency in their favour, the Duke must have
been less than human did he not resolve to evince his
gratitude to the counsellor who had so marvellously conjured
William's resentment as that three such enemies as they
should be permitted to ride forth from the gates of
Rochester and to quit the island, not a hair of their head
injured. That counsellor was Lanfranc.

There was a full court at Whitsuntide. William's un-
swerving adherents, such as Hugh of Chester and William
of Warenne, were there to congratulate their master and
themselves ; whilst less faithful barons, such as Gilbert of
Tunbridge and the Earl of Shrewsbury, were also there ; for
after their recent experience of a magnanimity that refused
to punish, it would ill have become them to stay away.

During Whitsun week, or at any rate before the breaking
up of the court, the Abbot of Le Bee wrote to his monks,
telling them that he had spoken to the King on a subordinate
matter of business, about which they had sent him a message,
but that he had as yet no definitive reply to give them,

282 ABBOT ANSELM'S RETURN.

and that he hoped to obtain the desired deed of confirma-
tion, but hinting in the last sentence of the letter that it was
just possible his return home might be slightly postponed.
In the course of a few days, however, he left England,
embarking, as I imagine, at Bosham, and carrying with him
not only the King's charter of confirmation, but pleasing
recollections of sympathy from one and all of the King's
barons and regrets for a friend dearer and closer to his heart
than any of them ; for, if I am not mistaken, the brutal
speech, ' Who can keep all his promises ? ' had just been
made to Lanfranc, and the adieux of archbishop and abbot
were saddened not only by the reflection that these were
probably their last, but by an apprehension of the early
incidence of some great disaster.

After a brief halt at Caen he set forth in haste, whither
we know not. He had communicated the secret of his
movements to the Abbot of St. Stephen's, but all that we
can gather from his letters is that he was bent on some
special errand somewhere in the kingdom of France, that he
had scarcely discharged it when he was laid low with fever
induced by mental anxiety, and that he scarcely regained his
cloister before the middle of July.^

I shall have to recur to these incidents in a later portion
of my work.

* * Beccum ante festivitatem S. Benedict! .... videre non potui.' TYiisfes-
tivitas S. Benedicti was not March 21, but July 11, on which day is celebrated
the translation of the body of St. Benedict from Monte Cassino to Fleury.

283

CHAPTER VI.

LE BEC AND CANTERBURY AT THE CLOSE OF 1089.

* Here let me dwell,' must have been his prayer when,
on returning to Le Bee in the July of 1088, he once more
found himself in the society of his monks. One of the
youngest of them — youngest in profession, at least, for he
had only worn the cowl for a month or two — was Baldwin,^
erewhile advocatus of the diocese of Tournay and a man of
political celebrity ; whilst amongst the novices there were
Hugh de Gournay, member of a family famous in history ;
and Odo, an old friend of the Abbot's and not improbably a
native of Aosta.

And very soon others found their way to that secluded
valley, for the most part young men who had no higher wish
than to serve God under Anselm's direction and in emulation
of Anselm's piety. Indeed, the prosperity of Le Bee — so
far as the prosperity of a community may be gauged by its
exterior accidents — must now have been very near its
culminating point, for the number of professions during the
next twelvemonth can scarcely, upon the most moderate
calculation, have been less than twenty, and may, indeed,

1 We shall see more of Dom Baldwin, but meanwhile I must observe that M .
Le Prevost [O, V. iv. 14 «.) is mistaken in supposing him to have been a Norman.
He was a Fleming, and the place whence he derived his surname was the
Flemish Tournay, not a hamlet near Le Bee. The allusions to him in Abbo t
Herman's Restauratio Abbatics S. Martini Tornac leave no doubt of this.

As to the other persons mentioned in the text, I must beg the reader to com-
pare Epp. ii. 25, 26 and the Nomina Monachorum. The ' domina Basilia '
mentioned in the second letter was the widow of Hugh de Gournay, a friend of
the Conqueror's, and was at this time living near Anselm's monastery with the
Lady Eva.

284 DEATH OF ABBOT GERBERT OF FONTENELLE.

have risen to thirty; whilst, if the man be happy who,
though burdened with responsibilities, has no cares ; who,
though poor, is no longer pinched by want ; who, though
great, has not yet an enemy ; if he may be deemed happy
whom Popes have summoned to share their counsels and
kings to receive their confidences, and the products of
whose genius, inspired with all the grace of youth and with
all the vigour of manhood, are already set by the discerning
side by side with those of the foremost guides of thought
in bygone ages ; if he be truly happy who in a time of
conflict, of passion, and of tumult can thankfully avow that,
though empires have been swept by political whirlwind and
kingdoms ravaged from end to end by moral pestilence, the
storm has not come nigh him, nor the plague approached his
dwelling — if such a man be happy, then Anselm's happiness
was at its flood between the summer of 1088 and the summer
of 1089.

But when visions are at their brightest who shall say how
soon they may be blurred ? In the May of 1089 Archbishop
Lanfranc went to his reward, and was followed in September
by Gerbert, Abbot of St. Wandrille. The Conqueror, in the
dying speech commemorated by Orderic, had mentioned
Gerbert by name in the following connection : — * Never,' said
he, ' have I dishonoured Mother Church ; on the contrary, it
has been the great desire of my life, whenever occasion
might ofler, to show her respect. Never have I made traffic
of ecclesiastical preferments ; and as to simony, I have
always detested and kept clear of it. In the choice of
dignitaries {personarum) I have tried to find out sound
doctrine and meritorious life, and so far as in me lay I
have entrusted the government of the Church to the
worthiest men that were to be had. This my boast has
its verification in such men as Lanfranc, Archbishop of
Canterbury ; Anselm, Abbot of Le Bee ; Gerbert, Abbot
of Fontenelle ; Durand, Abbot of Troarn, and many others

A SUCCESSOR APPOINTED. 285

the teachers of this my realm, whose praise, if I mistake
not, has extended to the very limits of Christendom. Men
like these have been my companions in counsel ; I have
found truth and wisdom in their society, and it has always
been a satisfaction and a pleasure to me to avail myself of
their advice.'

But no such principle of action was to rule the Conqueror's
successor in the duchy, who, being only a duke, soon dis-
played a melancholy pride in aping the offences of an
emperor. No sooner was Abbot Gerbert dead than Robert
Courthose, as though he were free to set aside the rights of
the proper electors and to trample the best interests of their
monastery underfoot, boldly adopted the imperial theory,
threw canon law to the winds, threw his duty as a Christian
prince to the winds, threw public decorum to the winds, and
made known his resolution to give away the abbacy of St.
Wandrille at Fontenelle to whom he would, just as he might
have given a tenantless cottage or a tenantless field of his
own to whom he would. What the Conqueror had treated as
a public trust the Conqueror's son now treated as a private
chattel.

Here was a change indeed ; and to give that change effect,
to transfer that change from the realm of theory to the realm
of practice, only one condition was required. A vacant
dignity was to be treated as a chattel, and all that was needed
was a man to accept it as a chattel. And a man there was
thus ready ; and that man was a monk, a Benedictine, a
nephew of the late Archbishop Lanfranc, and, cruellest of
all, a child, disciple, subject of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bee !

On hearing the news Anselm wrote a letter to the Duke's
unhappy accomplice, and sent it to him wrapped in a parch-
ment cover, upon which was the following memorandum : —
' Brother Anselm, however unworthy, yet still Abbot of
the Monastery of Le Bee, to Brother Lanfranc, monk of the
same community. May he decline from evil and do good.

286 ABBOT ANSELM'S AMAZEMENT.

' I, Brother Anselm, under God the lover of your soul,
your faithful adviser, and, by God's ordinance and your own
election, your abbot, admonish you in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ ; I counsel and I bid you read carefully
this my letter more than twice or thrice ; and, placing
yourself in the presence of that strict Judge under whose
eye you are, ponder well my words and my admonition.
And should it chance that, whether from miscarriage or
from your refusing to read it, some one else should do
so, then in the name of Almighty God I charge him
not to withhold salutary admonition from your soul, but
on opening this premonitory injunction either to read it to
you or to give it you to read, and then to unfold the letter
itself and spread it out before you for you to read it for
yourself from beginning to end ; which if he refuse to do,
may God require your sin at his hands, and so there may
be no shifting of blame in the day of the revelation of the
just judgment of God.'

This terrible prooemium must have ensured the perusal
of the ipsa epistola which accompanied it — a cry of anguish
arrested and set down in writing : —

* Before things were set in train for your receiving an
abbacy, I said to you and to others, I said in private and
in public, I said from my heart and with my lips, that I
was unwilling you should do so ; that I disapproved of
such a course ; that I did not advise it ; that I should
never require it ; and that, were you ever to accept one
without my express command, I should never assent to any
bishop's giving you the benedictio abbatis. And yet I know
not by what Divine judgment it was that I was kept in ignor-
ance of the pain that awaited me when you should be in the
very way for receiving such a gift. But when the mischief
was done, then the terrible gravity of the thing fell on me
like a thunderbolt and the awful judgment of God stood

THE ABBOT'S GRIEF. 287

revealed to my view. I heard, and my bowels were
troubled ; I considered and trembled for fear ; my heart
was broken within me, and all my bones trembled. I felt
how hateful a thing it was in the eyes of God and of all
whom God has enlightened. So, I tell you, and I tell you
sorrowing, that you first, and by means of you all our order,
and most of all I, your abashed and sorrow-stricken father,
and with me our Church, your mother, all of us are made
a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and a derision to those
that are round about us ; and to all that hear of it is a
pattern set and an example given for the dishonour and the
destruction of the Church of God ; and in this our age and
this our country you, you have made yourself the beginning
and the beginner of it.'

Yes indeed, this is a cry of anguish, but it is more. It is
a singularly valuable evidence that the plague which had so
long afflicted the Empire had as yet been warded off from
Normandy. * You have made yourself the beginning and the
beginner of the thing in this our age and in this our country.'
He then proceeds : —

* Bear with me, my son, when I speak so seriously ; I
am not urged by passion sprung of hatred, but constrained
by sorrow sprung of love. The afflicted brother longs to
succour the brother he sees perishing ; the trembling
shepherd flies to snatch his dread Master's sheep out of the
jaws of the lion ; the father follows his poor son to call him
back as he hurries on to hell. Oh! come back ! come back
to my bosom ! Think well what you have done ; probe
well your inmost heart. You have cast away the counsel
of the Eternal and held by evil counsel ; for the Lord
casteth away the counsels of princes, but the counsel of the
Lord endureth for ever.'

In this last sentence is his only allusion to Duke Robert,

288 THE ABBOTS REMONSTRANCES.

but it is intelligible enough, and is quite in the style of his
letters generally, where every word is well chosen and has its
own peculiar meaning.

* It is not Christ the Truth who has made you abbot,
but your own cupidity, and the temerity of those who per-
ceive not the things that are God's. Remember that he
that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a
robber ; and that the thief cometh not but to steal and to
kill and to destroy.

' My son, you have not entered by the door, for you
have not entered by Christ ; not by Christ, because not by
truth ; not by truth, because not by rectitude ; for no monk
enters into an abbacy by rectitude who does not enter by
regular election and by obedience.^

'Do not make excuses for yourself. You will say, " I
have not entered by disobedience, for you did not forbid
it." Be it enough that there was no rectitude in your act,
since you did not enter by obedience. True, I did not say
" I forbid it " or " I require you not to do it." I thought
it enough for a reasonable man that over and over again I
said, " My heart refuses, it disapproves ; my mouth neither
advises nor enjoins it, and never will enjoin it ;" " should
you ever receive an abbacy without my express command
you will never have the Archbishop's blessing." A monk
should not expect to hear a word, of 'command when once
he knows the wish or the advice of his abbot. Since, then,
you have not entered by the door, the thing is too sad for
me to say ; but reflect, and say to yourself what name The
Truth Himself gives you, and what it is that He says you
have come to do.' ^

1 This sentence is worthy of the writer, for it contains an allusive reference to
his lectures on Truth, which must have recalled to Dom Lanfranc happy days
fifteen or sixteen years gone by.

2 Ep. ii. 42,

CANTERBURY ON LANFRANCS DEATH. 289

The plague spot has at last appeared on the monk of a
Norman monastery, and that monastery Anselm's. Abbot
Anselm's vision of terrestrial happiness has faded. His
discipline of patience will soon begin.*

But Robert's brother, the King of England, had already
for some months been engaged on a far more daring flight,
the logical outcome of the assumption that ecclesiastical prefer-
ments are the property of the prince ; and his procedure upon
Lanfranc's death must now engage our attention.

The monks of Christ Church were in the very agony of
their bereavement when the jaunty and irrepressible Renouf,
attended by a group of satellites, drew rein at the gate. He
entered the cloister, and, blandly requesting that the necessary
information might be given to his clerks, bade the latter draw
out a schedule of the property of the see, both within and
without the walls of the city. When these schedules were
completed, and the simple faces of the English monks were
still beaming with admiration of the Norman lawyer's con-
scientious accuracy and their guileless hearts invoking beni-
sons upon a prince who would not suffer the sacred revenues
of the see to be wasted during its vacancy, the royal
chaplain in brief and clearly uttered phrase informed them
that he thereby levied a duty upon their victuals, that he
imposed a tax upon their lands, and, finally, that the whole
property of the see of Canterbury was from that moment
forward part and parcel of the royal demesne. Sentence of
death all round would not have dismayed his listeners more,
and, be it well believed, would have given them far less pain.

Henceforth not a bushel of corn, not a sack of beans, not
a basket of fish was brought into the precinct but the ad
valorem duty was charged upon it. The sacredest spot in our

* The personality of the younger Lanfranc is of slight importance compared
with the facts that give the case its real interest. It may, however, be well to add
that the Chronicon Fontanellense says he died in 1091, a statement which the
learned editor of Neustria Pia has somewhat rashly called in question.

VOL. I, U

290 THE CHRIST CHURCH MONKS,

island was infested by the very scum of mankind, whose busi-
ness it was to pry into granary, store-room, and kitchen ; to
march about the cloister as if it were their own ; to issue orders
here, to launch threats there, and to flaunt the royal impiety,
the royal license, and the royal greed in the face of its dis-
tracted inmates. Discipline was soon lost in disorder ; then
discontent and discord broke loose ; then the tithes, falling
into arrear, came in at rarer and yet rarer intervals ; then
famine and beggary raised their horrid front ; and, whilst some
of the monks took to flight and sought shelter in other homes,
those that remained remained to witness and to experience
still more ruthless outrages and still more cruel woes.

Much of this misery was the indirect consequence of the
royal confiscation ; the direct results were more disastrous.

Hitherto the Christ Church rents had been mercifully
assessed, had never been burdensome, had sometimes been
little more than nominal. Not so now. Now, the King, hav-
ing ascertained what each estate might be forced into yielding,
let it ad firmam for twelve months to the highest bidder,
provided the sum offered were in excess of the reserved rent.
The contract, however, was not worth the parchment on which
it was written, for the farmer was in danger of being outbidden
at any moment, in which case he could only save himself by
outbidding the outbidder. But this was only the beginning
of troubles. At the end of the first year there was a general
reletting of the estates by auction ; at the end of the second
there was another, at the end of the third another, and at the
end of the fourth yet another. Hence untold sufferings —
untold because inefl"able. Oppressed and oppressing, men
preyed upon their next poorer neighbours, and these in their
turn on a still more unhappy class. The humblest were the
first to fail, but others followed, and then others, the destruc-
tive tide rising with a steady fatality and engulfing layer after
layer in the hierarchy of wealth ; and the historian, himself
a witness of what he records, grows more than eloquent when.

THE CHRIST CHURCH TENANTS. 291

describing the sufferings of the tenants, he tells how the
desolation of their homesteads and their own hearts' misery
surpassed one the other in woeful alternation under the cruel
and still more cruel racking of their rents, how year after
year the wonder grew that the winepress of extortion could
be made to receive one squeeze more, and how mankind were
made to learn by ghastly experience on what scanty susten-
ance the flame of human life could make shift to escape
extinction.

Those who suffered the most by this cruelty were English-
men, inhabitants of Kent, who had risen en masse in their
sovereign's behalf a little more than a year before it began.
It was their sweat, their blood, their life, that for five long
years were converted into gold for the feeding of William's
foreign mercenaries. He had the nation under his heel, and
he meant to keep it there.

u 2

292

CHAPTER VII.

LE EEC AND BRIONNE IN THE SPRING OF IO9O.

The moment has come for recording an episode in the history
of Le Bee which, whilst it ruffled the tranquilHty of Anselm's
spiritual family, can scarcely have helped to deepen his own.^

The reader has no need to be reminded that upon the
death of Count Gilbert — an event which took place in the early
days of the old monastery down stream, and before Lanfranc
had come to make the name of the secluded beck illustrious —
the young Duke of Normandy, at that time a boy in his teens,
conferred the fief of Brionne upon his first cousin Guy, Count
of Burgundy ; or that Guy made a sorry return for the favour,
took arms against his lord, was defeated at Val-es-Dunes, and,
retiring to Brionne, shut himself up in his island fortress, where
for two long years he baffled all the skill of his outraged
besieger and capitulated at last in the year 1050.

On his kinsman's surrender Duke William took up the
seigneury of Brionne, and v/as on many occasions the near
neighbour first of Abbot Herlwin, then of Abbot Anselm.

It was during a period of retirement to his water-bound
stronghold and the forest which, vocal with bark of fox and
cry of partridge, overlooked him from close neighbouring cliffs
on this side and that, that Duke William conceived his terrible
resentment against Lanfranc, and then, taking shame to him-
self, went forth to meet the poor prior, who was ludicrously
employed in stimulating the inactivity of the ' three-footed
horse.' It was during another such that, when the beech

' The story is to be found in Bouquet, vol. xiii.

THE PATRONAGE OF LE EEC. 293

leaves were already mellowing to their fall, he paid his royal
homage to Abbot Herlwin's newly chosen successor.^ It was
during yet another such that he for the first time listened to
Anselm's pleading in court, and watched the growing wonder
of his lords as they discovered that the orator was indifferent
to the issue, provided only that justice were done.

When, however, Robert Courthose in 1087 succeeded to
the coronet of Normandy, that prince conferred the seigneury
of Brionne upon the aged Roger de Beaumont, who, after
a short tenure of some two years, transmitted it to his son
Robert, Count of Meulan, and not long afterwards sought
repose from the fatigues of an active and eventful life in the
abbey of Saint Peter at Preaux. But during the interval
which elapsed between Roger de Beaumont's resignation
of Brionne and his assumption of the religious habit an
opportunity was offered him of displaying that diplomatic
skill for which his name was famous. It was on this wise.

Soon after taking possession of Brionne, Robert of Meulan
betrayed a wish to obtain the seigneury or dominium of the
Abbey of Le Bee, a right which the Duke had reserved to
himself when he gave the domain to Roger de Beaumont,
and thus, like Gilbert of Brionne, like Guy of Burgundy, and
like the great William, to be patron of the abbey. We
cannot, I fear, learn when it was that he first gave the
thought a lodging in his bosom ; but there can be little doubt
that he brought his scheme to light soon after the death of
Archbishop Lanfranc, and still less that he hoped to win
fresh favour with the King of the English by its successful
execution. Anselm's name was already whispered as future
Archbishop of Canterbury as early as the year 1090. Why,
then, should not the wish of William Rufus have been con-
fided to so trustworthy, so able, and so resolute a dependent

' I scarcely need remind the reader that it was not as Dul<e of Normandy
but as lord of Brionne that the Conqueror in 1079 conferred tlie temporalities of
Le Bee on the newly elected Abbot.

294 ROBERT, COUNT OF MEULAN.

as Robert of Meulan as early as the fall of the year
preceding ? For Duke Robert's retention of the lordship of
the land on which the abbey stood/ and of the patronage of
the abbacy, might prove a grave obstacle to Abbot Anselm's
removal. And if Count Robert was prompted by any motive
in advancing his new claim, what motive more strong than
devotion to the prince whose interests he had now for several
years upheld with all the energy of his being? And if he
had any end in view, what end more definite, and to himself
more advantageous, than the removal, if so be he could
effect it, of Abbot Anselm from Le Bee at that prince's
bidding ? And, yet again, the suspicion, whatever its in-
trinsic value, derives confirmation from two noteworthy facts
— first, that Robert de Meulan precipitated, if he did not
suggest or compel, his father's resignation of Brionne ; and
secondly, that the resignation took place either shortly before
or shortly after the close of the year 1089.

The crafty Count then — it was said that his rival in
the arts of management was nowhere to be found between
Windsor and Jerusalem — began by attempting Anselm's ear
through the intermediary of a confidential embassy — tunc
primimty ut astutus homo, privatim aures Anselmi per nuntios
expetiit. Might he venture to beg, indeed suppliantly pray,
that the Abbot would grant him the great favour he so
devoutly coveted ? What more natural, more excusable,
and in its way more praiseworthy than so pious an ambition ?
Besides, the change he contemplated would make him, how-
ever unworthy to succeed, yet still the successor of men like
Count Gilbert, Count Guy, and the incomparable prince
lately taken from them, all of whom as resident neighbours
had learnt how to grace their seigneury by augmenting the
revenues of the monastery. And there were other ways in
which a lord of Brionne might be of material service to a

* Dom Herlwin's abbey down stream had stood on his own alodium, which was
just outside the coinitattis Brionensis ; not so the new abbey.

THE COUNT'S SCHEME. 295

religious house situated on the proper Brionne demesne,
which must necessarily be out of reach to a distant and non-
resident patron. For example, it would be most agreeable to
him to see the castle chapel served by fathers from the
monastery. To all which the tranquil Abbot answered, 'To
grant this is not within my competence ; the abbey is not
mine, but the Duke's, and as pleases him so will the issue
be.' * The Count makes no doubt,' said the messenger,
' that the Duke's consent will easily be had ; all he wants is
to ascertain your own wish on the subject, and to have your
concurrence.' Abbot Anselm may not have been a good
man of business, but his head was perfectly well set on his
shoulders, as his answer proved. ' I have no power whatever
to act in this matter, but I frankly tell you that, in my
opinion, the Count is undertaking no easy task.' ' How } '
exclaimed the interlocutor. The Abbot gave his reasons in
detail, and the messenger, saying nothing — for he had nothing
to say — bade a disconcerted adieu. His report of Abbot
Anselm's expose would seem to have taken Count Robert by
surprise, for, says the chronicler, obstupuit ad prudentiam viri.
As to Abbot Anselm's monks, the news fell on them like
a death knell. Their first impulse was to take the Duke into
their confidence without delay. This saved them. * By the
marvels of God,' he shouted, ' what is this I hear } What
tomfoolery is this.-* The Count of Meulan wants to take
my abbey from me, does he .'* My favourite abbey, too !
The traitor wants to steal it from me, does he } By the
marvels of God, he shall have short joy of the grant I have
made him.' As good luck or good management would have
it, William Crispin, the son of Herlwin's friend the first of the
name, WilUam of Breteuil, and Roger of Bienfaite, who, as
grandson of Gilbert of Brionne and son of the long since
evicted Richard, was the last man in the world to brook
Count Robert's claim, now came upon the scene, and, vent-
ing their ire in a volley of terrible oaths, swore to recall

296 THE COUNTS VISIT TO THE ABBEY.

all that their respective famihes had ever given the abbey,
should the Count in any manner of way get it into his
seigneury, and concluded by discharging a round of abuse
on the Duke himself for having been so simple as to hand
over the key of Normandy to a man who was not to be
trusted. Whereupon the monks, satisfied with the issue of
their expedition, went home again.

After the lapse of a day or two Count Robert, who was

quite in the dark as to the impression he had made on

Anselm's religious, was announced at the abbey. But before

the Abbot could reach the guest room, Dom Farman, who

had worn the cowl for more than forty years and now held

the distinguished post of cellarer ; Dom Eustace, one of the

best heads for business in the house ; Dom Albert, the senior

member, or nearly so, of the community ; and Dom Robert,

whom, I regret to say, I cannot identify, had flown through

the cloister, borne on the wings of rage, and were already

face to face with their visitor, of whom, in voices which they

fondly thought they were controlling, they begged to learn

what it was to which they owed the honour of his visit. He,

practised mocker that he was, answered them just as if he

were the best friend they had ever had and were quite

unconscious that they were angry with him. This, of course,

exasperated them ; and, by the moment the Abbot was in the

room, they were already favouring their visitor with a few

sarcasms, against which his noble rank served as a very sorry

defence. But the Abbot restored order, and then, seating

himself, began, * Count, you will never succeed in what you

are taking such pains to accomplish. Our lord the Duke

does not wish it, neither do the exalted personages on whose

bounty we live ; and, what is more than all else put together,

their reverences my sons in religion will on no account agree

to it. The Castle of Brionne has not come to you by

inheritance ; you hold it at the Duke's pleasure, and he will

resume the grant whenever he pleases. But why should the

THE COUNTS RECEPTION. 297

battle be fought out here and by us? Find out what our
lord and yours wishes, and rely upon it that his decision will
be final and his injunction absolute.' But in Dom Eustace's
noble bosom the storm was still raging ; the Abbot's tact was
lost on him ; he was young ; he was one of the junior set ;
his blood had not begun to cool in his veins ; composure and
soft words were not to his liking. So, starting to his feet and
stretching forth his right hand towards the church, he cried,
* By this church, whose monks we are, I say that even if you.
Father Anselm, and our prince the Duke of Normandy were
to bring yourselves — a thing I cannot contemplate as likely —
yet, were you and he to bring yourselves to say ' Yes,' we, the
monks of Le Bee, would one and all of us quit its walls
sooner than allow this thing. And as to you, my lord
Robert, by this church ' — he must have been much moved
thus to break the rule of his order which forbade swearing —
*by this church I swear to you that as long as I live, and
the rest of us, on no account and by no contrivance shall the
liberty of the Church of Le Bee be petticoated at your
bidding.' The others now took up the parable, and only
stopped short when the Count went away, which he did in
high dudgeon ; 'whose dudgeon the monks thought nothing
of; all they cared for was to keep the independence of their
church independent.'

In the course of a few days the seigneur of Brionne set
out for Rouen ; whereupon the monks, apprehending any-
thing and everything from the vacillating character of Duke
Robert, sent forth an embassy, who somehow stole a march
on the Count — they must have kept a wakeful eye on his
movements to do this — and arrived at Rouen just in time to
apprise the Duke of his approach ; when in he came. ' Ah,
Lord Robert,' said Courthose with a chuckle, * how go es it
with you and the monks of Le Bee t ' Disconcerted at the
sight of the white Benedictines, he replied, hanging his head,
' As well as may be. Whatever you order them to concede,

298 A GREAT DISASTER.

concede they will.' * Thou liest,' roared the prince, * out and
out, thou liest! By the marvels of God, never was emptier
thought than thine, that I should be such a simpleton as to
give my abbey up to thee.'

But enough of this. The embassy returned to Le Bee,
satisfied to think that Count Robert's hopes were now
finally crushed ; but they were, I suspect, mistaken. He
seems to have made one more effort to get what he wanted,
and they can scarcely have told their story at home before
the schemer, under pretence, it may be, that the value of the
seigneury of Brionne was materially lessened by the subtrac-
tion of so good a piece of patronage as the most famous
abbey in the duchy, had already set up a claim for Ivri,
a fortification at one time held by his father.^ * I gave your
father more than a fair equivalent for the stronghold of Ivri
in the noble Castle of Brionne,' said Duke Robert. 'I do
not allow it to have been an equivalent,' was the rejoinder.
'What your father gave my father, that I want to have.
Otherwise, by St. Nicaise,^ I will do you a displeasure.'
This speech cost the Count dear ; he was thrown into prison,
and Brionne entrusted to Robert of Bienfaite, son of Bald-
win of Meules and thus a grandson of Count Gilbert's.
It was now that Robert of Meulan invoked the intercession
of his father, and so well did old Count Roger ply
his arts that the captive was before long at large again.
Sire and son now approached the feeble prince, and by
the instrumentality of a * huge heap of money ' induced
him to recall the recent grant to Count Gilbert's grandson.
The latter not unnaturally refused to give up what he called
his heritage to anyone but the Duke ; and in the course of
the next Whitsun week — the Whitsun week, that is to say, of
1090 — when a fierce summer's sun was already flaring down
its meridian blaze on the surface of the Risle, he found

* Orderic, iii. 337.

2 There was, I imagine, even then a church to St. Nicaise at Meulan.

A TRIUMPH. i99

himself and his fortress suddenly surrounded and close
invested by Duke Robert and the two allies that had bought
him into their service. The siege, thanks to a device which
seems to have won some applause at the time, was of short
duration. At a little distance from the edge of the cliff
which at that point overlooks the left bank of the river a
detachment of the enemy erected a forge, lighted a fire,
plied the bellows, threw their arrow-heads and javelin-heads
into the glowing embers, and then, just as the day was at
its hottest, discharged one general simultaneous shower of
pointed and red-hot missiles into the lichen-mantled roof of
shingle which served as a protection to the hall of the castle,
A poor protection. Before the deluded defenders knew what
had befallen them their dwelling-place was wrapped in flame.
By sunset all was over. Then Robert of Meulan entered
into possession of the ruin, but took care henceforth not to
molest the monks of Le Bee with a claim for which he had
paid so dear. As to that claim and its object, whatever be
the reader's estimate of the suggestion which I have advanced,
a personage has in any case now made his debut upon our
pages who will have before long to appear again. He was a
servant with two masters ; and if it be too much to say that
he loved the one and hated the other, it is certain that he
held to the one and despised the other.

And yet why not hate Duke Robert t Duke Robert had
thrown him into prison. Could he be expected to pardon the
indignity }

300

CHAPTER VIII.

ROSCELIN'S heresy : ABBOT ANSELM'S FOURTH VISIT TO

ENGLAND.

The trials which befell Abbot Anselm in the scandalous
preferment of the younger Lanfranc, and in the designs of the
Count of Meulan on his monastery, were accompanied by a
third.

In the year 1080 or 1081 a novice bearing the name of
John received the habit of St. Benedict at the hands of
Anselm. He was a Roman by nationality and a clergyman
of the Lateran, but had already spent some time in the society
of the canons of St. Quentin at Beauvais. In the course of
some six or seven years a still older inmate of Le Bee, Dom
Fulco, or Foulques, a native of Beauvais or its neighbourhood,
was raised to the episcopal chair of that city, and had not
long been established in it when some of the canons, hoping
thus to get rid of a man whose life was a rebuke to them,
declared that his father had bought him the bishopric, and
that he must be deposed. Foulques was summoned to Rome,
whither he went attended by Dom John, whose knowledge of
the people and city of Beauvais, of the clergy and court of
Rome, and of the road that lay between the two places,
rendered him a suitable companion for such a journey. When,
however, the canons of the Lateran beheld their ancient
clerk adorned with the tonsure and clad in the garb of a
Benedictine, they lodged a complaint against the Abbot of
Le Bee for having made a monk of him ; and it was not with-
out difficulty that he obtained leave to accompany the bishop
on his homeward journey, under promise of returning to the

ABBOT ANSELM'S ORTHODOXY. 301

Pontifical Court by a certain date.^ This was in the summer
of 1089, the year of Archbishop Lanfranc's death.

But scarcely had Dom John reached Beauvais before he
heard of a strange report about his abbot. The famous
Roscelin of Compiegne was giving out to the world that the
late Archbishop of Canterbury had assented to a certain
heretical thesis of his concerning the Holy Trinity, and that
Anselm actually held the opinion enunciated in it. Dom
John, strangely staggered by such a rumour, wrote to Anselm,
who sent him in reply a short philosophical exposure of
Roscelin's fallacy, and announced his intention of treating the
subject at greater length.^

But this was not all, for, hearing that a council had been*
summoned to meet at Soissons, he wrote a letter to his former
disciple, the Bishop of Beauvais, which he begged him to sub-
mit to the assembly. It contained the following passages : —

* As to myself, I hold what we confess in the Creed when
we say, " I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth ; " ** I believe in one God, the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ; " and, "Whosoever
will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold
the Catholic faith." These three professions of Christian
faith I believe in my heart and confess with my mouth, as
being quite sure that whosoever denies any of them, and in
particular whosoever asserts for truth the blasphemy which
I hear Roscelin has attributed to me, be he man or be he
angel, is anathema ; and I further say, so long as he persists
in this impiety may he be anathema, for he is not a
Christian at all. If he be a baptised person bred among
Christians, he should by no means be listened to ; no
account of his error should be asked of him ; no account of

' 'Ante exactum a proesenti quadragesima annum' (B. Urban II., ^. 23).
The letter was written on August i, 1089, so that Xhe pj-cesens quadragesima was
the Lent which preceded the Feast of the Assumption.

' Ep, ii. 35.

302 INVITATIONS TO ENGLAND.

our truth should be accorded him; and as soon as his
treason against the faith is ascertained past doubt he should
either anathematise the poison he has belched forth, or else
be anathematised by all Catholics unless he repent. . . .
Our faith is to be defended by arguments from reason
against the infidel, but not against those who profess to
glory in the name of Christian. It is only right that the
latter should be required to hold unimpaired the promise
made in their baptism, and only reasonable that the former
should be convinced how unreasonable they are in con-
temning our belief. It is a Christian's duty to attain to
understanding through the avenue of faith, not to go to
faith through the avenue of understanding, or if he cannot
understand, then to fall from faith. When he can under-
stand, let him rejoice ; when he cannot, then let him adore
what he fails to grasp. I beg you to take this my letter to
the Council'

Meanwhile he began his treatise, throwing it into an
epistolary form, but had not gone far in it when he heard that
Roscelin had recanted and that the heresy had no adherents.
He therefore laid the unfinished document aside and thought
of something else. We will do the same.

In 1090 an accession was made to the Le Bee property in
England in the gift by Gilbert, Earl of Clare,^ of a church
belonging to his castle at Clare, in Sufiblk. This church,
which was well endowed, had hitherto supported seven
secular canons ; and these, or so many of the complement as
there might be, were now to change their habit and their
profession ; but Anselm, who was the proper person to give
the one and receive the other, refused to come to England.

After some little time the same sort of thing occurred
on the western side of our island. The King's cousin, Hugh

' Son of Richard Fitzgilbert, lord of Bienfaite and Tunbridge ; grandson,
therefore, of Count Gilbert of Brionne, the defender, that is to say, of Tunbridge
in the siege of 1088,

THE INVITATIONS DECLINED. 303

Earl of Chester, had on his estate a church in which the body
of the royal virgin St. Werburg had for two hundred years
reposed, and which was served by a body of secular canons,
apparently thirteen in number. This corporation the Earl
wanted to convert into a religious community, and begged
Anselm to effect the change ; but Anselm, as in the previous
case, refused to set foot on our shores.

The summer of 1091^ seems to have been just such a
summer as that of 1078. The corn crops failed from drought ;
the black harvest followed in its turn ; then came dearth of
food from end to end of Normandy ; and then, when Anselm's
monks hoped for food, as heretofore in bad times, from their
English estates, their hopes were disappointed ; for those
estates were suffering from the royal extortion, and from the
royal extortion there would be no redress so long as the Abbot
refused to visit England and with his own eyes see what was
going on. He persisted in refusing.

The truth is that a whisper had for some time flown about
our island, and passed thence to the duchy ; a whisper which,
though it caused him no concern, it would be indecent, as he
felt, to pretend not to have overheard. He was now nearly
sixty years of age, of a physique far from robust, in a frail and
variable state of health ; and his letters and other sources of
information place it beyond doubt that by temperament and
predilection he courted repose and calm, that secular business
was worse than distasteful to him, and that the merest dream
of removal to a sphere of turmoil and unrest would have been
as alien to the bent of his thoughts as to his tastes and habits.
Eadmer, indeed, assures us — and we can easily understand him
— that Anselm's entire being was so set and moulded to the
monastic model, that the sheer impossibility of removal from
the cloister was in his estimate as absolute a fact as any
axiomatic truth. The cloister was the theatre of all his fore-
casts, as it was the limit of all his tranquil hopes here below ;

' See Chron. S. Stephani Cadom., in Michel's Chroniques de Normdndie,

304 THE EARL OF CHESTER'S ILLNESS.

and I will venture to declare that never on unfrequented
granite isle did limpet cling to its rock with more serene uncon-
sciousness than the Abbot of Le Bee to a home whose every
inmate was bound to him by an intimate love strong as
death. He never dreamt even of the possibility of preferment ;
and it cannot be too often repeated that his refusal to enter
England was prompted, not by an apprehension that the
primacy might be offered him, but by dread of giving scandal.
Meanwhile the Earl of Chester fell grievously ill, and sent
a very different message from the first. Anselm must come,
and come quickly ; he must come, not as abbot but as con-
fessor, and in his quality of spiritual physician succour and
heal a stricken sinner. Hugh was an old friend of his, pro-
bably his oldest friend in Normandy ; for the two must have
made acquaintance three-and-thirty years ago at Avranches.
*And if,' so concluded the message, *a fear about the archbishopric
keep him back, I protest by my faith that there is nothing
whatever in the flying rumour. And, per hoc,^ let the holy
Abbot know that it ill becomes him to be kept back by
nothing when that nothing prevents his helping me in my
great and grievous need.' Still this appeal was unavailing ;
for Anselm feared that other people, who had not Earl
Hugh's opportunities of feeling the royal pulse, would be as
likely as ever to take the scandal he was so loth to give. The
poor Earl, however, was not to be baffled, for Anselm's was
the only bosom on which he could lay his throbbing head
and pour out all his heart's secret ; so he sent, for the third
time, not now a message, but a letter dictated by himself, all
eloquent with the touching unrestraint of the second person
singular, so difficult to transfer unspoilt into English. ' Know
well,' said the document, * that if thou come not, never all
through the life eternal wilt thou have such repose as not to
feel an everlasting pang for not having come to me.' The

' Per hoc, a kind of oath. This sort of thing was quite the fashion. Other
instances will occur in the course of the history.

THE JOURNEY TO BOULOGNE. 305

reply to this appeal was not unworthy of the casuist who had
spoken in the case of Elphege. ' I am hemmed in all round.
If I go to England an unworthy suspicion may, as I fear, find
place in somebody's mind, and I shall be thought to have
gone to canvass the archbishopric. If I stay away I shall
violate that brotherly charity which we are bidden to show
not only to a friend, but to an enemy. And if in the case of
a foe violated charity be a sin, what is it in the case of a
friend ? The Earl of Chester has certainly been from days
long since gone by my intimate familiar friend ; and my
friend, as he says, is now in want of me. In necessity is a
friend proved. If, then, for fear of the unfair opinion which
some men may possibly form of me, I do not help my friend
in his necessity, I incur a sin of my own of which there can
be no doubt by way of obviating a sin in others of the com-
mission of which there is a doubt. I therefore, commending
myself and my conscience to God — a conscience free from all
ambition of earthly honour — will set forth under the watchful
eye of His holy love to do what my friend wishes. Ccetera
ipse Deus agat. And may He for His mercy's sake keep me
by His grace free from all hindrance that comes of secular
business.'

As soon, therefore, as the anniversary of Abbot Herlwin's
death was over — for the day was kept with great solemnity —
he set out for Boulogne, where he wished to call on the
Countess Ida, but where, this business done, he was com-
pelled to prolong an irksome delay till wind and weather
should permit him to embark without probability of ship-
wreck.

Now during the interval of time thus passed at Boulogne
his monks did what they thought a very clever thing. On
recalling all that their abbot had said about Earl Hugh's
first, second, and third summons, and still more the speech in
which he had announced his intention of going to Chester,
it occurred to them that he must quietly have resolved not to
VOL. I. X

3o6 THE VOYAGE TO DOVER.

visit any of their English estates, but to quit the island as
soon as might be after seeing his penitent ; and that the phrase
ccBtera ipse Deits agat — or, as we should say, ' I leave the rest
to Providence' — may not have borne the meaning which
they in their eager delight at the thought of the proposed
voyage had all too inconsiderately put upon it. Whilst,
therefore, he was still lingering at St. Ulmar's, he was sur-
prised by a message which informed him that, unless he
wished to be branded with the sin of disobedience, he must
attend to the interests of his community in England before
presuming to return to his monastery.

If celestial beings are capable of so humble a pleasure as
amusement, the angels who presided over the good men's
deliberations^ must have smiled as they watched them thus
innocently plan their own discomfiture.

On the seventh of September, then, Anselm embarked,
silent and preoccupied, and attended by two of his monks,
Dom Baldwin of Tournay and Dom Eustace. The former
of these was a man of the world and of business, and the
latter seems to have been well acquainted with the condition
of the Le Bee property in England.

They landed at Dover, and mounting horse, reached
Canterbury just as evening hung forth the moon. But when
Anselm alighted at the gate of Christ Church a scarcely sup-
pressed murmur surprised his ear ; for, whether it be that some
most trifling yet profound coincidence had just been noted, or
that some fiery wonder even now flashed in prophetic hint across
the sky, or for whatever reason, the monks in the precinct and
the congregated citizens who had come to learn who the
visitor was insisted on acclaiming him as their future arch-
bishop. He was abashed and disconcerted, and hurried on
into the cathedral. The still and pensive hour shed through
the venerable pile an influence all too well in keeping with
the forlorn condition of our country. Discerned yet scarce
discerned through the deepening twilight, massive column

THE HALT AT CANTERBURY. 307

and sweeping arch and storied ceiling filled his soul with an
exquisite pathos, and presently he lay stretched on Lanfranc's
grave below the crucifix, shedding tears of regret at his own
loss and of anguish at the spectacle of the woe of the
mother of Christianity in this our land. * How doth the
city sit solitary that was full of people ! The mistress of the
isles is become as a widow, and the princess of provinces set
under tribute. . . . The enemy hath put out his hand to all
her delectable things ; for she hath seen the spoiler enter
into her sanctuary.'

Compline was said by such of Lanfranc's monks as still
remained, and then strict silence continued through the night.
But on the conclusion of prime ^ next morning Anselm sur-
prised and astonished his afflicted hosts by taking leave of
them. It was a great day, the Feast of the Nativity of the
Blessed Virgin, and they were in great trouble. Why, then,
leave them so soon } But he was deaf to entreaty ; he
wanted no more acclamations ; he must escape notice. So
he went.

He seems to have fixed upon Westminster as his first
resting-place, in which case the Court cannot have been far
distant ; and as an established usage no doubt forbade him
to enter England for the inspection of his estates without, as
a preliminary duty, paying his respects to the King, he lost
no time in doing so.

Upon his approach to the palace such marks of satisfac-
tion were evinced as the evil counsellors of William Rufus
would have found some difficulty in checking, even had they
deemed it decent to rebuke a reverence which they must
have been less than human not themselves in some degree at

^ Eadmer says sunww mane. I justify my interpretation of the phrase by the
following passage from Abbot Hermann's Be Restorationc Abbatice S. Martini
Tomacensis : —

' Summo mane, finito capitulo .... vestem clericalem deponunt et monasti-
cam .... suscipiunt, ita ut cum matutinos et primam ritu clericali gantassent
jam tertiam .... cantaverint. '

3o8 THE MEETING WITH THE KING.

least to share. But if any such were there, they skulked
appropriately and naturally out of sight, and left the first
greetings to a group of gentlemen who hurried to the ves-
tibule to give him welcome in the King's name, and express
their own joy at beholding so revered and so unexpected
a visitor.

If Abbot Anselm's appearance at such a place as the royal
palace had now become did not revive in William's courtiers
those hopes for the future of England which had now for
some time been set aside, it must at least have recalled to
them those happier, purer, brighter days in a no distant past
when he was wont to receive a less ostentatious, because a
more cordial, welcome than that which now awaited him in
the Throne Room. In those days royal sovereignty owned
and honoured the Divine law as its rule and model ; in those
days royal greed, not yet grown insatiable, left a few things
sacred in the land ; in those days royal lust was an unknown
phrase ; in those days in this palace of Westminster decent
custom stood sentinel to human frailty, modesty could pace
the corridors without alarm, and a man like Anselm was not
out of place. But now the royal palace was a very lazar-
house of moral ill ; the flimsied veil of shame had already
been scornfully cast aside ; and the anointed sovereign of a
Christian people himself gave example to his courtiers of a
icense and a debauchery for which names are not to be
found. It was a strange place for such a visitor.

As Anselm's guides conducted him to the chamber of
presence the King of England assumed a part more than
royal ; stepped from his throne, advanced to the door, and
after overwhelming his visitor with kisses— God save the
mark ! — took him by the hand, conducted him to his own
couch, and, bidding him be seated, sat beside him. The
Abbot, with good breeding as exquisite as it was all his own,
yielded to treatment for which a lifelong knowledge of the
ways of courts scarcely, perhaps, afforded him a precedent.

THE KING'S HEART OF HEARTS. 309

and sustained for some minutes a lively and agreeable con-
versation with the sovereign. But he cannot have been
simple enough to think that such a welcome from such a man
was a spontaneous outburst of respect and afifection. What,
then, can have been its motive ? Let us pause a moment to
conjecture.

Years ago, when Anselm was as yet prior of his monastery,
an incident occurred which must have served to fix the direc-
tion of the general hopes of England in regard of him. On
retiring to rest — whether at night after matins or at midday
for his siesta, remains uncertain — he found a gold ring in his
bed. Many questions were asked, but no clue could ever be
obtained to the mystery. Of course we who live eight
centuries after the event know, each one for himself and
diversely from everyone else, how that ring found its way
there, and dissolve into fits of merriment at the serious
mention of so insignificant and so contemptible an episode.
But when Lanfranc heard of it he said, * Mark my words : that
man will some day be Archbishop of Canterbury.' Now this
presage and its interpretation cannot have remained a secret ;
the story must have been told at a hundred firesides ;
William the Conqueror must often have pondered over it with
mingled wonder and pleasure ; the Red King must over and
over again during the last three years have reflected on it
with some perplexity, and the Red King's barons kept hope
alive on it during that interval ; so that, absurd as it may have
been in the Conqueror, the Red King, and the Red King's
barons to waste thought upon such a trifle, it would be
absurder still in us to disdain all notice of it in the present
connexion. For presages like this commanded a religious
respect in the eleventh century, and so sacrilegious an offender
as William Rufus, powerless to exorcise the thoughts which it
suggested, must have been convinced that, long as he might
keep the archbishopric vacant, Anselm would live longer, and
that, brief as might be the residue of Anselm's life, the season

310 A PRIVATE INTERVIEW WITH THE KING.

of the Church's widowhood would be briefer, and, unless he
repaired the wrong, more brief still his own tenure of the royal
throne of England.

But Anselm was a Norman subject, and it would be wise,
by way of averting a very evil omen, to keep him in England,
now that a favouring chance had brought him there.

Avarice, however, was in the Red King, if not a more
powerful, yet a more urgent motive than even superstition.

Everything was by this time venal, and if his barons were
— as indeed they were, if only in their own interest — anxious
to have an Archbishop of Canterbury, there was now an
opportunity for inviting them to offer a price for the luxury
they craved.

On the whole, then, the most probable account of the
extraordinary reception thus given to the Abbot of Le Bee is
that William Rufus meant to say to his barons. This is the
man whom the King delights to honour ; let me have a fair
price and he shall be your Archbishop.

Can Anselm have suspected this } Not improbably. For
having come to Court to make suit for his abbey, he seems to
have changed his intention before he had been many minutes
in the King's company.

After some little time, then, spent in conversation he
intimated that he would like to confer in private with the
Royal Majesty. Baldwin and Eustace and the gentlemen in
waiting all retired ; the door closed ; the prince and the monk
were left alone, sitting together. The saint fixed his eye upon
the sinner. It was time that a word should be said about the
domestic morals of the royal household, of a palace by night
studiously wrapped in darkness, and by day scandalous
in the manners and the garb of some of its inmates;
about the comments which all classes of the King's subjects
were passing upon a moral debasement of which it was
only too probable that he himself had sounded all the depths.
William grew very red, but, unable — such was the overmaster-

THE ABBOTS RETURN TO LE BEC POSTPONED. 311

ing authority of his monitor's rebuke, and such the sweetness
of his monitor's manner — to vent chagrin in rudeness, broke
out into a constrained laugh, declared his inability to stop
other people's tittletattle, and awkwardly suggested that it was
beneath the elevation of Anselm's nature to believe all he
heard.

Anselm, having thus done his duty by the son of his late
friend ^ and by himself — for this was not the way in which to
court preferment —retired and left the prince to commune with
conscience.

On reaching Chester he found the Earl out of danger,
remained with him for some days, and returned to West-
minster early in October.

The secular concerns of his abbey now engaged his
thoughts ; but on presenting his petition to the King for
a relaxation of the enormous taxes which Renouf Flambard
had levied on its English estates, he failed to obtain redress,
and was desired to wait till Christmas. But he need not be
idle, for Roscelin, who had made a fictitious recantation of
his heresy at the Council of Soissons,^ was again disturbing
men's minds. He therefore sent to Le Bee for the unfinished
treatise on the Incarnation which he had thrown aside, and
prepared to devote his leisure to its elaboration.

' The date of the interview is not recorded, but it may have taken place on the
9th of September, the anniversary of the Conqueror's death. Indeed, nothing
could well be more probable than that it did.

2 See Ep. ii. 51. There is some uncertainty as to the date of the Council of
Soissons. I imagine it was held in the spring of 1090. The compilers of the
Histoire Litteraire de la France are strangely mistaken in setting it as late as the
beginning of 1093 ; for the letter in which St. Anselm speaks of it as an event
already some time past can scarcely have been written later than the middle of
October 1092.

312

CHAPTER IX.

AN INTERVAL OF SUSPENSE AND ALARM.

When the Court assembled at Gloucester in the month of
December, the thought of the patriarchal throne at Canter-
bury so long left tenantless had already inspired the King
with an alarm which he was careful not to betray to his
barons.

William Rufus was no atheist. On the contrary, it was
one of the worst features of that bad man's character that,
although he recognised the designs of Divine Providence and
acknowledged the scrutiny of Divine Omniscience, he yet
beheld in those designs nothing better than the cunningly laid
plans of an adversary who meant some day to outwit his
manoeuvres, and in that scrutiny nothing better than the
watchful gaze of a foe who meant some day to execute
vengeance on his affronts ; so that his faith in an Infinite
Being, minutely interested in him and his concerns, was but
another name for intimate consciousness of his own revolt
against God and intimate fear lest the Divine forbearance
should not hold out for ever.

It is just possible that upon assuming the seigneury of the
Canterbury estates he was as much frightened as gratified
at the thought of Renoufs audacity, and contemplated with
shrinking alarm the first pecuniary product of that miscreant's
impiety. Let it have been so in the summer of 1089; by the
winter of 1092 every sentiment of respect, of decency, of awe,
had long ago disappeared before an insatiable avarice ; and
nothing but craven fear, whether of Divine wrath or of human

THE POLITICAL HORIZON. 313

indignation, could now compel him to renounce a sacrilege
which had lost all terrors of its own.

But how long might he delay ? If the growing displeasure
of God were in anything to be discerned it was in the aspect
of the political horizon. And he scanned that horizon with
some alarm. In Flanders the death of Robert the Frisian ^
had a few weeks previously left the succession to a second
Robert, a prince of capacity and courage who was not unlikely
to give the Conqeror's favourite son the full benefit of an
animosity which he had shared with the Frisian against the
Conqueror himself. But this was not all. Henry Beauclerc
had quite recently secured a footing in Normandy,^ and Henry
was the dread of William Rufus no less than Robert Court-
hose; for their father had prophesied that, outliving William's
tenure of the crown of England and Robert's tenure of the
coronet of Normandy, he would in due time make both crown
and coronet his own ; and the astute Henry, seconded by such
a man as the new Count of Flanders, would prove a very
different foe from the indolent Robert represented by the late
Count of Boulogne. How, then, avert the omen but by
propitiating that Divine resentment of which it was the
indication .-* And how do this but by repairing the great
sacrilege of his reign, and furthering the manifested will of
Heaven, in regard of the archbishopric of Canterbury }
Henry was Divinely destined to be King of England ; Anselm
was Divinely destined to be Primate ; and there was only one

* Robert the Frisian, Count of Flanders, died October 4, 1092.

* The importance of this event could scarcely be overrated. Orderic records it
thus : — ' Anno ab vie. Dom, 1092 .... Henricus .... Danfrontem auxilio
Dei suffragioque amicorum obtiiiuit, et inde fortiter haereditarium jus calumniari
sategit. Nam idem dum esset junior non ut frater a fratribus habitus est, sed
magis ut externus exterorum auxilia qucerere coactus est, et quinque annis' (i.e.
from the moment of his father's death) . . . . ' admodum fatigatus est. Tandem
Donfrontani nutu Dei oerumnis tarn proeclari exulis compassi sunt et ipsum ....
sibi principem constituerunt ' (iii. 384). And again, ' Henricus frater ducis
Danfrontem fortissimum castrum possidebat et magnam partem Neustrise sibi
favore vel armis subegerat ' (iii. 475).

314 THE KING'S FEARS AND CAUTION.

remedy for the fear already stirred within him by this double
conviction.

Still he was wary enough not to let fear disarm discretion.
It might be possible to conciliate, if not the friendship yet the
neutrality, of the new Count of Flanders ; and, inasmuch as
the numerous leases under which the Canterbury domains had
been distributed would not determine until Midsummer, he
might well keep his reflections to himself for some months to
come, by all means, however, detaining Anselm in England
and awaiting the chance of a pecuniary bid from Anselm's
friends.

Meanwhile how were the King's barons employed t The
almost hopeless hope recently revived in the hearts of the
Canterbury monks of once again beholding a Primate who
should be the mouthpiece of the nation, its leader, and its
guide, and the bond at once and centre of the public interests,*
was already taking with William's barons the form of an
inchoate and timorous resolve. This was not much, it is true,
but it was something, and more could scarcely at that moment
have been expected of them. Their fiefs and titles were the
reward of services rendered five-and-twenty years ago, and the
first man among them who should rouse the royal ire might, as
the reward of his courage, soon behold fief escheat to the Crown
and title vanish into air. On the other hand, dangerous as it
might be for one man to speak, they felt that the time was
approaching when all of them must act ; unless, indeed, some
political chance should limit the capacity of a tyranny which
at this moment knew no bound. Three years ago the prince
had appropriated the most sacred of all sacred properties in
the land ; last summer he had committed a like iniquity at
Lincoln ; ^ next year he might do the same with some other
diocese. And what would be the end of it all "i Might a Christian

* 'Os omnium, vexillifer praevius, umbo publicus.' — W. M., De Gestis Pontiff,
lib. i.

2 Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln, died in the May of 1092.

CANTERBURY A LESSER ROME. 31 5

king in a Christian land be suffered to extirpate Christianity
by way of filling his purse and feeding his mercenaries ? Was
it altogether inconceivable that, having asserted and enjoyed
the liberty of thus treating ecclesiastical property, he should,
under the convenient term of consuetudo} claim a like liberty
with the next military fief that fell vacant, and after ruining
the estates sell the succession to some stranger to the pre-
judice of the heirs ? But this was not all.

By protracting thus inordinately the vacancy of the see of
Canterbury the Red King had violated a sacred constitutional
usage, and, indeed, had thrown the constitution out of gear.
For what the Sovereign Pontiff was to Christendom as an
all-compelling power ordained to uphold right against force,
to shield the weak from the oppression of the strong, and
to oblige sinners to listen to the threats and tremble at the
sanctions of Divine justice, that, in his proper sphere and
within limits ample if clearly defined, was the Archbishop of
Canterbury to the King and people of England ; and the
occupants of the Chair of St. Peter at Rome, their own
incommunicable privilege apart, recognised and owned so
accurate a copy and so plenipotentiary a representative of
themselves in the occupants of St. Augustine's chair at
Canterbury as to call them the popes of a secondary
empire.^ Had Constantine relinquished the capital of his
empire in favour of St. Sylvester.? Ethelbert relinquished
Canterbury in favour of St. Augustine, and retired elsewhere,
symbolising by that act the recognition of his accountability
to that power of whom St. Augustine, by the mission given
him by Gregory the Great, was within his realm the repre-
sentative.^ The old metropolitan church at Canterbury

' I hope in a subsequent chapter to have something to say on this word
consuetudo.

2 Apostolicus cdterms orbis. I shall have something to say about this on a more
proper occasion.

^ ' Hie (Ethelbertus) Cantuariam regni sui caput et sedem regiam S. Augustino
jure regali dedit.'

* Praedecessor noster Gregorius constituit .... metropolitanam et primitivam

3i6 ECCLESIASTICAL PRESTIGE OF THE PRIMATES,

had been a copy of the Lateran basilica at Rome.^ The
Archbishop of Canterbury was, in virtue of his office, the
legate of the successor of St. Peter. As recently as 1049
Leo IX. had given witness to the tradition of centuries by
confirming the rights long enjoyed by the Primate of Britain
of taking rank at Rome immediately after the seven cardinal
bishops.* It was the prerogative of the Archbishop of
Canterbury to confirm or to annul the election to the
sovereign dignity in our island as it was the Pope's to confirm
or to annul the like in Germany. And if none but the Pope
might crown an Emperor of the West, none within our shores
save the Archbishop of Canterbury might presume to crown
a King of England.^

It would, perhaps, be impossible to form an exaggerated
estimate of the religious prestige with which the Chair of St
Augustine was invested by the whole universal people of
England ; difficult it certainly is, under the altered conditions
of our age, to conceive an adequate idea of the political
importance of its occupant ; and if the spiritual grandeur of
the see of Canterbury was the only adequate measure of the
scandal which the Red King had now for three years and a
half given to England and to Christendom, the dignity of its
occupant as a great power in the constitution was the only
adequate measure of the political wrong which for three years
and a half he had inflicted on his people.

sedem in civitate Dorohernio ubi caput totius gentis Anglorum a diebus paganorum
habetur.' Boniface V. to Abp. Justus.

• And called * ecclesia Christi ' because St. Sylvester had given a like dedication
to the Lateran basilica. The Vatican basilica had its copy in the Church of St.
Peter and Paul, afterward at St. Augustine's.

' ' Addidit etiam prsefatus episcopus noblitatem Anglicse hierarchiae exponere
quod, scilicet, Cantuariensis praesul apostolica auctoritate Romae assidere debeat
sanctse Ruffinse pontifici .... Quaesitum est in decretis et inventum ibique papce
atque omnium assensu corroboratum. ' Goscelini Cant. Mon. Hist. Translat. S.
Augtistini [Migne, civ. 32],

^ William the Conqueror was, T know, crowned by two apostolic legates in the
year 1070, but this was an exception which proved the rule. There was at that
moment no Archbishop of Canterbury.

POLITICAL FUNCTIONS OF THE PRIMATES. 317

There cannot be doubt that whilst by immemorial custom
the proceres, principes, or primates of the realm acted as
counsellors of the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury was
his monitor. It was theirs to advise the Crown as to the
material administration of the kingdom, police, taxes, defence
against invasion, and the rest ; it was his to inform and direct
the conscience of the sovereign whenever material interest and
moral obligation might come in contact, and, by the sanctions
of Divine law, to check the first symptoms of indifference to
the interests of the subject. There was no public opinion, no
press, no parliament ; and even had there been, the theories of
which public opinion, press, and parliament serve in these days
as the illustration had not as yet found a lodging in the
wildest of fancies. Once chosen, the sovereign must not
only reign, but govern ; and he was expected to govern, not
in conformity with human law dictated from below, but in
obedience to Divine law as interpreted by its proper
expounders, and in emergent cases by the Primate, who held
towards him the relation of father to son, and whose authority
over his conscience was the only official check against des-
potism known to the age. Bad kings had chafed against the
check, but there it was ; so that when Lanfranc, suspecting
what might happen, required William to swear that in all
things he would obey his admonitions, he only reduced an
ancient usage to a formula ; and when Anselm, always happy
if sometimes quaint in his similitudes, represented King and
Primate as two oxen coupled by the same yoke, the theory
was accepted without challenge ; nor, indeed, would it have
been advanced without the justification of fact.

Hence it can scarcely be unreasonable to suppose that
thirst for gold had not been William's only motive in so long
refusing to let Lanfranc's empty throne be filled, and that
lust of power had urged him thus rudely to break a prescrip-
tion which princes less audacious would have been content
slowly to enfeeble,

3i8 THE ALARM OF THE BARONS.

Good reason, therefore, had the primores regni for alarm,
as they gathered around him at Gloucester at the close of the
year 1092. He had already for nearly four months detained
in England the man whom they wished to see adorned with
the archiepiscopal mitre, but had not said one syllable about
Canterbury. This was scarcely fit conduct for a Christian
king. He was fast forfeiting the name of Christian.

Happily, however, they had good reason to indulge a
sentiment more potential than that of alarm. This was the
eleventh occasion — or might have been, if it was not — on
which, during the space of three years and a half, they had
assembled without a president ; but it was perhaps the first
on which they felt that they could no longer suffer them-
selves to be thus deprived without forfeiting their self-respect,
and without betraying one of the most precious of their
rights as the constitutional advisers of the Crown. We
know not what had on previous occasions been said about
the vacancy of the archbishopric and about the confiscation
of its revenues, but may reasonably presume that, keeping
the two subjects distinct, the prelates and barons, however
indisposed or disinclined to discuss the latter, had not for an
instant forgotten that it appertained to them to discuss the
former, inasmuch as their constitutional right to a share in
the election of the Archbishop of Canterbury imposed upon
them the corresponding duty of providing that the vacancy
of the primatial see be not causelessly and unreasonably pro-
longed. If it was in his quality of territorial lord that,
abusing the privilege of advocatio, William had taken the
archiepiscopal estates into his seigneury and appropriated
their revenues, he was in his quality of King bound to con-
sult his Council upon the appointment of a new Archbishop ;
and, whether or not the assignment of the Canterbury
revenues during the vacancy appertained to the realm of
consuetudo^ there could be no question that the ancient law of

RESOLUTION FORMED BY THE BARONS. 319

England empowered the magnates regni to advise the King
as to the person most fit to play the part oi pater patrice.

And the moment had at last come at which it would
have been worse than foolish and worse than wicked to
neglect the assertion of their right. For if the King had
hitherto excused his delay by the failure of the Count of
Meulan to secure the patronage of Le Bee, and by the refusal
of the Abbot of Le Bee to visit England, they were now
already complaining to each other that it was time they
should own the King was trifling with them, time they should
ascertain what it was he meant, time they should make, if
only a timorous and inchoate resolve, yet, at the very least,
that.

But it was evident that they must be exceedingly cau-
tious, inasmuch as, however disinclined to betray their elec-
toral responsibility or relinquish their electoral right, it would
be of little use in asserting the one and claiming the other
to make a demand they could not enforce ; a difficulty
rendered all but hopeless by the fact that, William having
hitherto refused to acknowledge the Pope, any reference they
might make to the Holy See would only be a provocation to
him to throw himself into the hands of the heterodox party.

My own belief, then, is — and I hope to justify it in a
subsequent part of the narrative — that, sending privately to
Rome for advice, they postponed all formal action in the
business to Easter, entrusting themselves meanwhile to the
mercy of Heaven, and resolving to let the King know at
least thus much : that, in their opinion, it was now high time
to appoint a new Archbishop.

After some considerable discussion this resolution of the
prelates and barons took a form with which the statement
of a grievance would have been incompatible, and thus a
singularly prudent one ; still, a form which would let the
King know how close home their grievance had come to

320 ABBOT ANSELM'S SECURITY.

them, and thus a singularly suggestive one ; above all, a
form which, appealing as it did to the royal conscience, was
a singularly admonitory one. They one and all approached
him, and 'with suppliant entreaty' — so says Eadmer — * begged
their lord the King,' that he would * allow prayers to be offered
throughout all the churches of England that God would
vouchsafe to put it into his heart, by the appointment of a
worthy pastor to the Mother Church of the kingdom, to raise
her up from her fallen estate, and through her others.' He
was * somewhat indignant ' at the proposal, but with all the
tact of a good governor gave the permission craved, adding,
however, with a scornful laugh, that, let the Church pray as
she might, he should not desist from doing precisely what he
pleased ; * for,' said he, ' no man's prayer shall ever change
my will.' The remark was received quite as a matter of
course, and the primores regni retired from the presence.

Anselm, who was probably the guest of the Abbot of St.
Peter's at Gloucester, and who must have overheard all the
gossip concerning the Court with no other hopes and no other
fears than such as he had entertained on previous occasions
when sent to England in the interests of his abbey, regarded
this extraordinary incident with all the interest of a Church-
man indeed, but with the same sort of personal unconcern as
would in these days be evinced by a foreigner casually landed
on our island upon the eve of a general election. His friends
at Le Bee had been quite right, he thought ; the best informed
men in England had now for four months said nothing to
him to justify the faintest suspicion that preferment awaited
him in their midst ; and if he had himself instinctively and
as of course made no allusion to the Canterbury scandal, the
Earl of Chester who was cousin to the King, the Bishop of
Rochester who knew all about Canterbury, the Abbot of
Westminster who had no dearth of political information, can
scarcely have been thus utterly uncommunicative, except as
knowing that any rumour which might once have disturbed

ABBOT A NS ELM'S SECURITY DEEPENED. 321

him was a vain one, or as being indisposed to make needless
allusion to an unwelcome subject.

And if anything could have deepened his security, it was
what happened next. The bishops on whom it devolved to
order the modus orandi for the relief of the Church of Can-
terbury from her long and unprecedented widowhood and
woes, asked him to undertake the charge ; and thus, as he
himself could on no account have asked such a service of
any man whom he conceived to be, whether wittingly or un-
wittingly, a candidate for the primacy, his conviction that the
prelates, like the barons, had simply overlooked him was, if
confirmation were possible, confirmed.

So strange a request from wearers of the mitre took him
by surprise ; but there is a point beyond which resistance
ceases to be humble, and he was at last fain to yield. As
soon, then, as the modus orandi he suggested had been set
forth, the Court broke up, and bishops, barons, and abbots
went each his way, the only unanxious man of them all being
Anselm. tie was as one in the centre of a cyclone,

VOL. I.

322

CHAPTER X.

ST. anselm's appointment to the primacy.

The King seems to have been enjoying the pleasures of
the chase in the royal park of Alveston, a richly wooded
property carved out of the Forest of Kingswood and com-
manding an extensive view of the valley of the Severn,
when, about the end of February, Abbot Anselm, his tour of
inspection being now completed, waited upon him to take
leave.' But William desired him to postpone his departure,'-^
and he retired to Arle, a manor in the parish of Cheltenham
belonging to St. Peter's Abbey at Gloucester.^

Shrove Tuesday fell this year — the year 1093 — on the ist
of March ; and it was on or about that day that one of the
peers happened in the course of conversation to remark to the
King, * We do not know a -holier man, I am sure, than the
Abbot of Le Bee, Anselm. He loves nothing but God, and it
is as clear as noonday that his heart is set upon nothing here
below.'

' In 1088 he had allowed himself about five weeks for his round of inspections.
The business at Chester, arrears of work elsewhere, and not improbably visits to
'new estates, would now add two or three weeks to the five. And he had said .
in the autumn {Ep. ii. 51), * Reditum nostrum ante quadragesimam non spero
futurum. '

2 This is a noteworthy fact. Eadmer says (clix. 363), ' Detentus est in Anglia
fere mensibus quinque. . . . Post hsec in Northmanniam regredi volens negata a
Rege licentia copiam id agendi habere non potuit. '

^ I confess I speak without absolute certainty. The county historians seem to
have nothing to say that can help me. The History of St. Peter' s^ Gloucester,
says, ' Ethelbaldus rex Merciorum dedit Deo et Sancto Petro Gloucestrise. . . .
viginti hidas terrae in villa quae vocatur Aire ; ' but all that I can get from Bigland
{^County of Gloucester, i. 312) is the following about Arle Court : 'Attached to the
ancient structure was a chapel, now destroyed, on a beam of which was a date,
1250. Here likewise is a medicinal spring.'

THE KING'S TONGUE UNLOOSED. 323

For six months had William Rufus preserved a sullen
and tormenting silence about his captive ; but the tenor of
this remark, and its manifest sincerity, surprised him into
speech. It was like the happy accidental touch that sets a
spring in motion, and lo ! valves unfold, and the treasured
hoard lies all displayed. His tongue was unloosed ; he could
restrain himself no longer. * No, indeed .?' he asked with a
sneer, ' not even upon the Archbishopric of Canterbury } ' * Not
even upon that ; certainly not,' was the curt but respectful
reply. ' Such at least is my conviction, and there are many
who share it.' * I tell you what,' cried the flushed and excited
prince, ' he would come clapping his hands and skipping for
joy, and would fling himself into my arms, if he had the
slightest hope of being able to aspire as high as that. But I
swear by the Holy Face of Lucca ' that just now neither he nor

' I need scarcely say that this was the Red Kii.g's usual oalh. 'The object
by which he swore .... was the Face of our Saviour on a very ancient crucifix
of cedar, said to have been carved by Nicodemus himself, and to have been
miraculously brought to the city of Lucca in 782, where it is still preserved
with the greatest care and veneration in the chapel of the Holy Cross in the
ca'hedral. "II volto santo di Lucca" has always been highly prized by the
inhabitants, who have even stamped it on their money. Four of their coins, dated
1725, 1735, ^7A9) ^^^ 1766 .... are figured in Bonneville's Traite des
Monnaies, Paris, 1806.'— Note by the Rev. J. Griffiths in his edition of Inett's
History of the English Church {ii. 134).

Copies of this venerable relic are not wanting. I remember to have seen one
at Naples ; but I have a curious fact to note. Some four hundred yards from the
praetorian gate of the city of Aosta is an archway erected in honour of Augustus
and in commemoration of the defeat of the Salassi. That archway is called Saint
Voult, and numberless local charters preserved from the Middle Ages make
mention of it under the name oi sanctus vultus. There can be no doubt of the
origin of the name, for a very ancient crucifix still stands in the vault of the arch.
I cannot tell the age of this crucifix ; it did not occur to me when I was at Aosta
tnat I should have to write a note about it ; but I make no doubt that it either is
or has replaced a copy of the venerable relic at Lucca. Such copy of that vener-
able relic adorned the archway, I suspect, in the early days of Anselm ; and if so
it may have been Anselm to whom William Rufus was directly or indirectly
indebted for so much as he knew about the ' Holy Face of Lucca.'

Gervase of Tilbury gives the following account (^Otia Imperialia, xxiv.): —
' Est alia in linteo Domini figura expressa quae ut in gestis de vultu Lucano legitur
hoc suum habuit initium! Ciim Dominus Redemptor noster exutus vestimentis
suis in cruce penderet .... mater ejus et alire quse cum ea erant cito euntes
emerunt linteum mundissimum tam amplum et extensum quod toti Crucifixi corpus

Y 2

324 SUDDEN ILLNESS OF THE KING.

any other man shall be Archbishop but myself.' This out-
burst frightened the interlocutor dumb ; and the exasperated
monarch, whose eyes, owing to a caprice of nature's in the
colouring of the iris and a mixture of whites in the cornea,
glared hard and frightful at times like this, repeated the oath
and cried, ' By the Holy Face of Lucca, neither he nor any
other man shall be Archbishop but myself ! '

Those words reached Heaven. Scarcely were they spoken
when the speaker fell suddenly and alarmingly ill. But none
were more alarmed than he. At last the hand of God had
touched him ! And was this God's answer to the prayers
that he had sneered at t

As he was carried in all haste to Gloucester the news flew
on the wings of terror from end to end of England, and by
the morning of the following Sunday ^ bishops, abbots,
tenants-in-chief, were crowded in and about Gloucester Castle,
waiting for the curtain to fall on a career once bright, indeed,
but of late despotic without bound and sensual beyond the
reach of words. Eternity was nigh at hand, and a soul so
sadly bested must not be let go into eternity as it was. It
was a crisis of salvation or of damnation, and they implored
him to think of his dearest interests, to have pity on himself,
to open his dungeons, to set his captives free, to forgive his
debtors— ah ! how many a tale of woe and of broken hearts
had those poor debtors to tell ! — to restore their liberty to the

operiebat pendentis de cruce ; ciimque deponeretur apparuit totius corporis effigies
in linteo expressa, ad cujus similitudinem et exemplar Nicodemus vultum
Lucanum effigiavit.' He then goes on to give the history of the journey of the
volto sacro from Jerusalem to Lucca.

The Pere Longueval says of this crucifix, ' Le Christ est represente attache a
la croix habille, comme on le voit en effet dans plusieurs anciens crucifix, et que le
peuple nomme pour cet effet S. Godelu ou Vaudelou, par corruption de S. Vault,
de Lucques {Hist, de V Eglise Gallicane, tom viii. p. 66).

' I suppose the King to have been taken ill on the morning of Shrove Tuesday.
York lies a hundred and fifty miles from Gloucester 'as the crow flies,' so does
Rochester ; and the greater part of England is within a much shorter radius.
Most, therefore, if not all, of the bishops must have been on the move by Thursday
morning ; and most, if not all, of them can have had little difficulty in reaching
Gloucester by Saturday night. They had forty hours of daylight for their journey.

CONFESSOR AND PENITENT. 325

churches he had enslaved, their proper pastors to the charges
let out on hire, and above all to set free the see of Canter-
bury, a see * the oppression of which,' to borrow their own
phrase, ' had reduced the religion of Christ in England to the
level of a deplorable degradation.' Thus did they beseech
him.

What took place thereupon Eadmer does not inform us.
Suffice it to say that after an interval — how short or how
long an interval matters not — the sufferer in an ecstasy of ter-
ror cried out for Anselm. It was his impious speech about
Anselm and the archbishopric that had provoked the thun-
derbolt ; and now the long-nursed conviction that his own
temporal welfare was inextricably involved in Anselm's
preferment arose and overpowered him, and, questioning
whether life could hold out till the Abbot's arrival, he insisted
on his being summoned.

The bearer of the message, breathless and agitated, broke
rudely in upon the sacred reveries of the abstracted recluse,
who, as having no immediate interest in the affairs of the
realm, had not been apprised of the King's illness, and hurried
him off in hot speed to receive the last sigh of the royal
sufferer. When he entered the sick chamber, first one and then
another anxiously begged to know what he thought the best
course to be taken for the salvation of the sinner. * Tell me,*
he said, 'what you have yourselves advised him to do.' The
answer was satisfactory, and he resumed, * It is written, Incipite
Domino in confessione\ hence it seems to me that he should first
make a good confession of all the offences against God of
which his conscience accuses him, and unfeignedly promise
amendment for the future, should he recover ; and when he
has confessed, then let him give orders that what you have
advised be immediately set in execution.' The bishops
thereupon requested him to receive the confession, and
approaching the sick man, told him that Anselm was there,
and advised his resorting at once to the sacrament of penance.

326 THE KING'S ACTS OF REPARATION.

The sufferer, racked by the memory of sins which even
now held him quivering on the brink of endless woe, and by
a bodily torture which even now seemed severing his immortal
from his mortal part, acquiesced. The room was cleared ;
the priest and the penitent were left alone.

When summoned again into the sick room, iho. primates
regni perceived that the expression of anguish had dis-
appeared from the King's face. God had spoken to him
through His minister ; he had listened to the voice, and all
that now devolved on him was to make public reparation
and public promise of amendment. In the presence, therefore,
of the nation, thus represented round about his bed by the
lords spiritual and temporal of the realm, he frankly and
explicitly engaged his royal word henceforth, should he be
spared, to govern his life by mansuetude and justice ; and
handing the sacred rod of sovereignty ^ to the bishops, begged
them to go and lay it in his behalf on the altar of the church
appertaining to the castle.^ But he did more.

I need not remind the reader that the dying prince — he
thought at least that he was dying — had been exhorted,
before Anselm's arrival at the castle, to liberate his captives,
to forgive his debtors, and to put an end to the public evils of
which he was the author ; but it is particularly worthy of
remark that the solemn act which is now to be described
contained no explicit promise of the reparation of the Canter-
bury scandal and others of like character. The very termino-
logy of such a promise might have involved the discussion
of questions with which it would be cruel to disturb the last
moments of a dying man. Nevertheless, if anything could

' ' Virgam emendationis indicem per episcopos .... super altare vadem
mitteret.' It was a virga, not a virga pastoralis. The virga was one of the royal
insignia. The insignia were the ring, the sword, the crown, the sceptre, the rod.
I say this on the authority of Archbishop Robert's Benedictmim ium, the priceless
relic of Anglo-Saxon England preserved in the public library at Rouen. To have
had what was not his own laid as a pledge on the altar would have been absurd.

"^ I have no doubt whatever that the ecclesia of the various accounts is the
church, or chapel, of Gloucester Castle.

A NEW PRIMATE NOMINATED. 327

bind the King's conscience to repair those wrongs it was the
act now to be performed, and with a conscience thus bound
he might resign himself without fear into the hands of his
all- merciful Creator.

Whilst the venerable procession of the bishops left the
room, carrying the dove-crowned ensign of royalty to the
altar, a clerk was instructed to draw up an edict in which the
sovereign proclaimed three acts of indemnity and pledged
himself to as many principles of government. All his
prisoners whatsoever were thereby set at liberty, all debts
due to him irrevocably cancelled, and all offences hitherto
committed against his person consigned to lasting oblivion.
The document then went on to promise good and holy
statutes to the King's subjects, the inviolable observance of
law, and such a strict enquiry into wrongs and abuses as
should be a terror to evil-doers generally.

The contents of the parchment were now read to the sick
man, who, amidst tears of joy and exclamations of thanks-
giving from the charmed and affected bystanders, commanded
the great seal to be affixed to it. Never, never had they
known a conversion at once so sudden and so sincere. God's
chastisement had done its work ; the stricken sinner had
turned, and he should live. Henceforth they had a good
king and a great one ; and oh ! might God long preserve
him to them ! ^

The penitent had relieved his conscience, had complied
with the requirements of his confessor, and had inaugurated a
new era. Anselm's task was done ; and Anselm was already
retiring, when some well-meaning persons in the company
suggested that now was the time to raise the common mother
of the realm from her long widowhood, by appointing her a
pastor. With all his heart, said the King from his pillow ;
indeed, it was the very thing that he was thinking about.

* * Gaudetur a cunctis, bendicitur Deus in istis, obnixe oratur pro salute talis ac
tanti regis ! ' — Eadmer,

328 ABBOT ANSELM'S REFUSAL.

But who was to be appointed ? All depended on him. He
must speak the word.

So then the dying prince, dying till this last effort broke
the spell and gave him back to life, drew himself painfully
up in the bed, and supporting himself on his elbow faintly
said, pointing to the Abbot of Le Bee, * That is the good
man I choose, Anselm.'

The name * Anselm ' was instantly caught up, and passed
from mouth to mouth ; a confused hubbub, partly murmur of
approval, partly cry of benediction, resounded through the
room ; prelates and barons dropped instinctively aside, and
there, amongst them but now no longer one of them, there,
stark with amazement and pale as the dead, stood Anselm !

He neither moved nor uttered sound, till some of them,
advancing with intent to lead him to the King's bedside for
investiture of the archbishopric, recalled him to self-control.
But he refused to receive investiture of the archbishopric,
protesting that for many reasons such a thing was out of the
question. Whereupon the bishops, leading him apart from
the crowd, began, * What are you doing .'* What do you
mean } Why attempt to baffle God 1 You see that the law
of Christ is almost a dead letter in England. Everything
has fallen into confusion. There is no abomination that is
not rampant We and the Church it were ours to rule have
fallen into danger of eternal death through this man's
tyranny. You see all this, and yet when you might come
forward and help us you scorn to do so. Strangest of men,
what are you thinking about } Where have your senses
gone } '

Yes, indeed, what was he thinking about } He was think-
ing about things little dreamt of in their state theology, if
indeed he was thinking at all, and if his senses, as they
suspected, had not forsaken him.

' In the oppression of the Church of Canterbury,' they
continued, * we are ourselves all crushed and destroyed ; that,

ABBOT ANSELM'S REMONSTRANCES. 329

Church cries out to you, that Church in her distress craves
your help for herself and all of us ; and yet you care nothing
for her liberty, care nothing for our recovery, refuse to share
your brethren's toil, and only seek your own selfish, indolent
ease.'

' Bear with me,' he remonstrated in his turn, ' bear with
me, and listen. It is all quite true, I own. Your trials are
many, and call for relief But reflect, I implore you. I am
already in the decline of life ^ and quite unable to endure the
toils of place. How then, when I cannot do my own proper
work, am I to do the work of all the Church all over
England } And, more than this, my conscience bears me
witness that ever since I have been a monk I have shunned
secular affairs ; never have I been able to apply myself to
them to my own satisfaction ; there is nothing in them
pleasing or attractive to me. Therefore let me have repose,
and do not employ me on what I never liked, lest harm come
of it.'

* No, no,' they replied ; ' accept the primacy of the Church,
and never fear. Show us the way. Tell us, teach us what
to do, and we will engage to follow you, and obey you, and
carry out your injunctions to the letter. Busy yourself with
Heaven for us, and we will arrange your secular concerns
for you.'

' Impossible, impossible,' he interrupted ; ' I am abbot of
a monastery in another kingdom, with an archbishop to
whom I owe obedience, a temporal prince to whom I owe
subjection, monks to whom I owe all the counsel and help I
can give them. I cannot break with my monks without their
leave, nor set myself free from my prince's seigneury without
his permission, nor shake off the yoke of obedience to my
archbishop, if I would save my soul, without his release.'

'AH that is a light matter; their consent will easily

be got.

GrandcEi'us.

330 THE KING'S ENTREATIES.

* No, not at all,' he insisted ; * what you want will never
be.'

They were out of patience, and laying hands on him
dragged him to the sick man and reported his obstinacy.
Tears came to the King's eyes. ' Anselm,' he said, ' what do
you mean } Why hamd me over to the torments of eternal
punishment 1 Remember the friendship my father and
mother always had for you, and you for them. By that
friendship I implore you not to let their son perish body
and soul. Sure I am that perish I must if I end my days
with the archbishopric in my seigneury. Help me therefore,
reverend father, and take out of my hands a pontificate for
the keeping back of which I am sore confounded, and fear I
shall be worse confounded through eternity.'

The bystanders were greatly moved, but Anselm, inexor-
able even to an appeal like this, instead of yielding, began to
make excuses — what we are not informed, still — to make
excuses to the sufferer. Conduct which they deemed so un-
worthy of himself, so unworthy of the occasion, so cruel to a
dying man, made the bishops angry. ' What madness has
come over you t ' they cried. ' You are disturbing the King
and killing him outright. You see him dying under your
eyes, and are not afraid to ruffle him by your obstinacy as
he dies. Know this, that all the turmoils, and cruelties, and
crimes that henceforth shall afflict our country will be set
down to you, if you this day do not, by accepting the pastoral
care, prevent them.'

This was a frightful menace. What could he do }
Whither could he turn ? Gladly, he used to say, would he
then and there have died. Who could help him .'' Baldwin
and Eustace were standing by. He turned to them and
said, ' Ah, my brethren, why don't you help me t ' Eustace
could not speak ; Baldwin, the better tutored of the two in
self-control, so far mastered his emotion as to say, * If it be
the will of God, who are we that we should rebel } ' but burst

THE CROSIER OFFERED AND REFUSED. 331

into tears as he spoke, and blood flowing from his nostrils
showed what the effort had cost him. * Your staff is soon
broken/ said poor Anselm.

But if Abbot Anselm was in extreme distress, the King
was in an agony of terror to find that his expostulations were
all in vain, and bade the entire company try what entreaty
could do. But before bishops, barons, abbots could obey,
Anselm was at their feet. He could not, would not consent.

This exasperated them ; they were furious at his obstinacy
and ashamed of their own weakness. * The pastoral staff ! '
cried a voice. ' The pastoral staff! ' cried all the rest. They
caught him by the right arm, and, some dragging and others
pushing, got him close to the King's bed, and there held him
wedged. The King offered him the crosier, but he kept his
hand closed and refused to touch it. The bishops, now
thoroughly maddened and set upon winning their game if
even by main force, tried to open his clenched fist, but to no
purpose, although he was so hurt by their roughness that he
cried out for pain. At last they succeeded in unlocking his
forefinger, but, even so, before they could use their advantage
it was closed again and dug into the palm. That thin white
hand was never to be opened without the consent of the
owner.^ The bishops, therefore, applied the crosier to it and
held it there, whilst barons, abbots, and courtiers, serried in
thick crowd, bore them and him away in the direction of the
church. As they went a voice sang out, ^ Te Deum laudamus ; '
the clerical members of the moving mob immediately caught
it up, yelling forth its sacred periods with the uncurbed fury
of so many maenads ; whilst the pale and frantic monk,
struggling, but struggling in vain, to get free of them, cried,
* It is nought that ye do ! it is nought that ye do ! ' and the
convoy of laymen shouted, as they scuffled along, ' Long live
the Bishop ! Long live the Bishop ! '

It would appear that as soon as the bishops had, by

' See Epp. iii. I, 2.

332 SOME SURPRISING REVELATIONS.

religious ceremony as solemn as their excitement permitted,
done all they could to ratify the royal appointment and
relinquished their hold on their captive, they made it their
business to apprise him of one or two circumstances of some
importance. Anyhow, at whatever moment informed, in-
formed he very soon was —

First, that, little as he thought it, he had been a prisoner
for the last six months, and that the King, from the moment
he found him in his power, had resolved to detain him in
England, so as sooner or later to raise him to the primacy.^

He was further informed that their royal master had
resolved to compel Duke Robert's consent to the promotion.
For the Duke was, as we have seen, particularly tenacious of
his patronal right in respect of Herlwin's monastery ; was, in
his own way, as proud of Abbot Anselm as his father had
been before him, and might be expected, from the very con-
siderations which had engaged William to secure Anselm's
person, to strain every nerve to recover his possession of him.

He was, in the third place, informed that as far back as
Christmas communication had been made with Rome on the
subject of the protracted vacancy, and his name mentioned
as the object of the national choice.^ So that, whilst the
King without his knowing it had kept him prisoner for the
last six months, they in their turn, the lords spiritual and
temporal of the realm, had, for many weeks at least, indulged
the settled hope that he would ere long be granted them as
the answer to their prayers for an archbishop.

But more than all this : he now knew something else of
which it is high time that I should apprise the reader.

The message which brought him from Arle to Gloucester

' There can, I think, be no doubt of this. He must have written to Le Bee
for his unfinished treatise against the heretical theses of Roscelin in the October
of 1092 {Ep. ii. 51) ; and it would seem from the text of the De Incamatione
Verbi that at that time he was already ad episcopatutn captus et retcnius
(Migne, clix. 262).

2 Ep. iii. 3.

THE WHOLE PLOT REVEALED. 333

Castle was, whether purposely or not, so worded as to blind
him to certainly the principal, and perhaps the sole important,
reason for which his presence was required. It bade him
* come in all haste to the King, to support and strengthen him
by his presence before he should die ; ' and he must naturally
have supposed that the King wished him to hear his confession.
But it is more than probable that he would not have been
summoned at all had it not already been decided to promote
him to the primacy ; and if Eadmer, whose task it was to
show things as Anselm saw them, was too good a dramatist
prematurely to inform the reader of a fact carefully concealed
from Anselm until the very last, we must not therefore refuse
to accept the overwhelming evidence supplied us from other
sources of information. The reflecting reader can scarcely have
failed to note that in his aside with the bishops in the King's
bedchamber, Anselm spoke as holding them rather than the
prince responsible for the trouble that had come upon him.
And very properly. The fact is that they and the temporal
peers had solicited and obtained a conge d'elire at the earliest
possible moment ; had solemnly and unanimously elected
him ; and, after presenting his name to the King, who was
only too willing to ratify their choice, had summoned him
from Arle, if for no other purpose yet at any rate for that of
his appointment to the primacy.

King and kingdom, bishops and barons, clems and populus
had elected him. How was he to escape ?

The only questions likely then and there to occur to him
were — Had the election been regular .? Did the King really
think that he had given him investiture of the archbishopric }
On the first question the less said the better, as he discovered in
the sequel. As to the second, whatever the King might think,
Anselm had his own conviction. To give and to receive are
distinct and separate acts ; to offer and to accept are distinct
and separate acts ; and investiture is a game at which two
are to play, or it is nothing. He had not been invested, and

334 VISIONS OF THE FUTURE.

the King knew it. Confining himself, therefore, to this fact,
and avoiding whatever might harass the King's repose or
fret his temper, but contriving to mingle words of comfort
and prophetic cheer with what he felt it his duty to say,
he was no sooner permitted to leave the church than he
went straight to the patient's chamber, and, standing by his
bed, said, ' My lord King, you will not die of this illness ;
hence I wish you well to understand how easily you may
undo all that has just been done. I have not consented, nor
do I consent, to its being deemed a valid proceeding.' The
King's reply has not been recorded ; perhaps he said nothing,
for if Anselm's fortitude half an hour ago had set him think-
ing, Anselm's prudence now set him wondering ; and, like
the Count of Meulan on a memorable occasion, obstupuit ad
prudentiam viri.

On his retiring from the King's presence the bishops and
the entire peerage took care, in recognition of his new honour,
to show the way. As soon as he found himself alone with
them he paused and addressed them as follows : — * Do you
really know what mischief you are planning t You are for
yoking to the plough a poor weak old ewe by the side of an
untamed bull. And what will come of it } Not only untamed,
but untamable, the savage bull will drag the poor sheep right
and left over thorns and briars, and, unless the poor thing
disengage itself, will dash it to pieces. Where then will be
her wool, her milk, her young } She will yield none of them
and will be worthless. And why } Because you heedlessly
yoked together the sheep and the bull. The plough is the
Church, as when the Apostle says, "You are God's husbandry,
God's building." In England the two best steers of the herd
are set to draw the plough and trace the furrow — the King
and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The King's business is
with temporal justice and material rule, the Archbishop's
with Divine instruction and spiritual government. One of
them — I mean Archbishop Lanfranc— is now no more ; and the

A VISION OF THE PAST. 335

other, dragging the plough after him at will, has displayed the
wildness of a bull that nothing can tame ; and yet you want
to yoke me with him — a feeble old ewe with a mad bull.
Surely I have made my meaning clear to you. Think who it
is that you are coupling me to ; think, and give up your
scheme. For if you do not, I tell you what will happen.
Instead of my yielding you the wool and the milk of the
Word of God, and lambs for God's service — you may not think
it, but what I say is true — the King's cruelty will first wear
me out and then with many wrongs completely crush me ;
and the delight some of you for a moment feel at the thought
of your own relief from trouble, when once you find that the
accustomed counsel and hoped for help are no longer to be
had, will, to your dismay, be turned into utter misery. And
the next thing that will happen will be this — you will live to
see it, I assure you — the Church you are taking such pains to
raise from widowhood will fall into widowhood again with her
pastor still alive. And who will have to bear the blame but
you, who so inconsiderately have coupled together a ferocity
like the King's and weakness such as mine "i And when he
has got me under him, and there is not one of you that dare
face him, then to his heart's liking will he worry one and all
of you.'

As he said these words the composure he had forced him-
self to assume gave way before an only too true vision of
the future. He burst into tears, and signing to them to leave
him to himself, sought his lodging.

In the solitude of his chamber he now surveyed and
studied the appalling panorama, counted the woes he should
live to endure, and with prophetic certitude rehearsed the
part he was to play in each moving scene. But while his
spell-bound fancy was thus engaged there grew into the
vision forms and faces dear to him, and dearer than even he
had thought. The future disappeared ; he was looking at the
past ; he was at Le Bee again !

336 THE ANGUISH OF THE ARCHBISHOP ELECT.

Enough, enough. He has not recorded details too sacred
for our impertinent gaze. All we know is that, after some
time, he was seized by a paroxysm of emotion which en-
dangered life and reason. His wailings brought people to
the room, who, horrified at the alteration in his features, ran
for holy water, splashed him with it, and gave him to drink
of it — a remedy rarely tried, but tried especially in cases of
demoniacal possession or of frenzy.^

The paroxysm passed away, but he was changed from
what he had been. The tension of nerve and the subsequent
collapse left their mark on him. A strangely rapid failure of
sight was one memento to him of that terrible day ; and
henceforth he was an old man.

All this took place on Quadragesima Sunday, the sixth
of March, in the year of grace a thousand and ninety-three.

' A knight mente captus was once brought to St. Odilo of Cluny for healing.
' Misertus itaque homo Dei tanlse calamitati et condolens gratissimse juventuti
cum fratribus in terram ante altare Sancti Petri prosternitur, psalmis insistit,
patrocinia sanctorum cum litania requirit ; deinde surgens ad vexatum accedit
aqud sanctificationis aspergit, bibete cogU, et sic recedere permittit.' The man
was cured.- S. Odilonis Cluniac, Abb. Vita (Migne, cxlii. 933).

A similar case occurs in the history of St. Hugh of Cluny. ' Tunc sanctus,
misericordia motus, aquam afferri prsecepit, quam precibus sacris et benedictionibus
praesignavit, acceptoque cochlear i ter de aqud Hid in ore mulieris orando infudit.^
- Migne, clix. 921.

337

CHAPTER XL

THE LAST DAYS OF ST. ANSELM'S ABBACY.

Anselm had prophesied truly. Six weeks from the day on
which the Red King lay quailing on his bed of anguish the
Red King was well enough to hold his usual Easter Court at
Winchester.

But meanwhile he became only too painfully conscious
that in his hour of helplessness and terror he had belied his
reputation for wariness and caution by establishing a pre-
cedent the remote consequences of which even he could not
exaggerate. And who was to blame .? Often and often did
the convalescent ask himself the question as he lay tossing
on his couch. Yes, who was to blame ?

The reader has not forgotten that when the bishops and
barons were readmitted to the royal bedchamber after the
King had made his confession to Anselm, the sick man caused
one of the sacred ensigns of his royalty to be carried forth
and laid upon the altar of the adjacent church in attestation
of his resolve henceforward to live a life of clemency and
justice. In that there was no great folly, and had that been
all he could have borne the remembrance of the critical day
without alarm. But what could have possessed him that he
should execute a document which bound him to give the
people good and holy laws, to respect their rights, to avenge
their grievances .<* To break a verbal promise or a verbal
oath was an offence trivial and usual, but to violate the terms
of a written contract made venerable by the impress of the
great seal of the realm, were a crime which the estates of the
realm might refuse to condone. Holy Writ itself was scarcely
VOL. I. Z

338 THE ROYAL CHARTER OF MARCH 6, 1093.

more sacred than such an instrument ; and what might not
his barons some day require of him in virtue of it ? How
great, then, and how gratuitous had been his folly ! Great,
because what he had done once he might be called upon to
do again ; gratuitous, because in the annals of the English
Crown no such charter had ever as yet seen the light.
Indeed, indeed, he had established a very perilous precedent,
and I suspect that William Rufus knew better than a remote
posterity the value of the parchment engrossed in his behalf,
marked with his sign, and sealed with his signet on the day
when at Gloucester he lay quivering in the hand of God.
We owe Magna Charta to the document in virtue of which
Henry I. in the year 1 100 won the crown of England ; but I
question whether that document would have been executed
save for the earlier edict drawn up at Anselm's instance on
Sunday, the sixth of March, in the year of grace 1093. That
precious and primordial charter of our liberties has perished ;
there was every motive for destroying it. But, in an age
when precedent reigned unquestioned and omnipotent, it was
precedent enough that such an instrument should have had
existence ; and I am much mistaken if amongst the names
which adorn the annals of our freedom the first place of
all should not be claimed for the pious and unassuming
monk who, before adorning the throne which was after the
lapse of a century to be filled by Langton, thus forestalled
and anticipated Langton's exertions for the protection of
the people of England against the despotism of an alien
dynasty.

Still, great and gratuitous as was the folly with v/hich
the convalescent prince reproached himself in having thus by
parchment, sign, and seal given his subjects a hold, however
uncertain, upon him, his indiscretion had not stopped there.
Had it done so he might have been content to await its
consequences ; but, alas for him ! the charter contained other
clauses, whose operation he already felt, and felt in a diminished

IMPIOUS REGRETS OF THE RED KING. 339

exchequer. This was the greatest grief of all. Alas for
him ! the loss of so much pelf was the grief that came the
closest to his heart ; and, alas for him ! Renouf the Firebrand
was by this time at his side. ' Incredible folly ! ' cried the
prince. * Incredible ! ' echoed his diabolical adviser. And
who was to blame for it ? Who "i Yes, who } Not Anselm,
for any other good confessor would have laid on him the
very same injunction ; nor yet the bishops and abbots, who,
whilst Anselm was yet on his way from Arle, urged him to
do this very thing, forgive his debtors and release his pri-
soners for debt. No, no ; the fault was not theirs ; it was not
a human fault at all ; but the fault- — scarce does the pen dare
to write the words, and yet they must be written — it was the
fault of One whom he, the anointed king of a Christian
people, now no longer owned as a Father who chastises where
He loves, but as a mean vindictive Foe that had basely
frightened him, to take advantage of his fright and to sub-
tract so many pounds, so many shillings, and so many pence
from his exchequer.

From the moment this horrible thought took possession
of him — and Renouf the Firebrand was at his side to give it
emphasis and energy — from that moment all was changed.
From that moment the good angels who had been hovering
sadly over him fled sorrowing away, and the banished demon
returned, accompanied by seven worse, to take possession of
him.

Unprecedented woes now scourged England. Such
prisoners as had not been set free in obedience to the
King's edict were by his command not only detained, but set
in stronger hold and laden with heavier irons ; such as had,
were pursued and reconsigned to their dungeons ; the fic-
titious debts forgiven and the vexatious suits let drop were
exacted and pursued afresh by a miscreant minister whose
justice was all unjust and to whom mercy was an undreamed-
of attribute ; and as men watched the Firebrand now coldly

340 THE KEYNOTE OF THE KING'S FUTURE LIFE.

scanning the first doubtful apprehension of his victim, now
gleefully studying the anguish that accompanied the extortion
of the victim's uttermost farthing, the avowal broke from one
and all that their old miseries had been very blessings in
comparison with the new. Nor did they deem amiss ; for
the Firebrand was the proper agent of a prince to whom it
had by this time become a light thing to crush out hope from
the hearts of his people and as light a thing to harbour every
evil principle within his own.

It must have been at Easter that the good Bishop of
Rochester, who had been the chief prompter of the King's too
brief repentance, took occasion to admonish him, now that his
health was better, to live circumspectly and to God. ' Know
this. Bishop,' he cried, 'that never, by the Holy Face of Lucca,
shall God have good for evil out of me ! '

Strange and horrible phrase ! It was to prove the key-
note of his remaining life. ' Never shall God have good for
eviloutofme !^

Let us now resume the thread of Anselm's history.

His appointment to the primacy rendered it unseemly that
he should be permitted to reside any longer at Arle. Chosen
by King and kingdom ' to be the spiritual head of the alter
orbis, he must henceforward reside on one or other of the
archiepiscopal manors until such time as he should take
possession of his church and see ; and the royal sufferer gave
order accordingly, requesting the Bishop of Rochester to act
as major domo to him. It probably formed part of the official
functions of the Bishop of Rochester to do so ; in which case
the King's injunction may have had special reference to a
difficulty which had never as yet occurred in like case.
Gundulf might take his dismayed and unwilling friend —
Archbishop as all called him, Abbot as he called himself —

' The words * \ rege et regno ' occur with sufficient frequency in the accounts
of elections to the primacy to render it probable that they were a formulatic
phrase.

THE ARCHIEPISCOPAL REVENUES. 341

take him to Hayes, to Harrow, or to Lyminge, and usher him
into a suite of rooms which had not been occupied since
Lanfranc was last there ; but then the house was de facto not
Anselm's, but the King's ; and Anselm was, so to speak, a
guest under his own roof. Nor was this all. The archiepis*
copal estates had been let at an exorbitant rent to farmers,
who must now for some months to come be allowed to make
the most they could of every flock of wool and every ear of
corn, and the Archbishop elect must therefore buy, or Gundulf
must buy for him, the food and raiment needed for himself
and such retinue as necessity or custom had set to wait upon
him. But whence was money to be had t For every penny
of toll and other direct revenue accruing from the day of
Lanfranc's death had been diverted to the King's purse.* Not
only, therefore, was Anselm, so to speak, a guest in his own
house ; he was, so to speak, a pauper on his own land ; and it
may have been to meet this difficulty that the royal invalid
supplemented Anselm's appointment to the primacy by the
immediate transference to him of the alodmtn of St. Alban's,
and thus of such customary revenues as the Crown had hitherto
derived from the lands belonging to that abbey.

When we last saw the poor Abbot of Le Bee he was
in his lodging at Gloucester, bereft of self-control, almost of
reason ; dosed and splashed with holy water ; woe-begone
and broken-hearted. From Gloucester he was, as we have
seen, conveyed by Gundulf to one of the archiepiscopal manors,
but not before that prelate had written the monks of Le Bee
a letter, the very first sentence of which told them all. That
sentence was, mutatis mutandis, the formula set forth in the
Pontifical for presenting a bishop elect for consecration : —

' * Rex Willelmus junior in regia villa quae vocatur Aluwestan vehementer
percussus infirmitate civitatem Glovernam adiit, ibique per totam quadragesimam
languosus jacuit. . . . Sed Anselmo nil de archiepiscopatu prseter id quod
rex illi dari jusserat accipere licebat quoad tributum, quod post Lanfranci
obitum singulis annis inde acceperat persolveretur. ' — Memoriale Fr. Walteri de
Coventird.

342 BISHOP GUNDULF WRITES TO LE BEC.

* You know, my dearest friends, for how long a time the
English Church has been like a family without a father,
like a flock without a shepherd, and bereft of all paternal
consolation. But God has in mercy turned and listened to
the sighs of the orphans, the groans and wailings of the
widows, the prayers of His faithful, and vouchsafed at last
to visit and console them with His grace. Thanks to the
working of God's unspeakable power, our lord the King of
the English has, by the counsel and request of his peers
and on the prayer and petition of clergy and laity, entrusted
Abbot Anselm with the government of the Church of
Canterbury. We owe this without doubt to the all-
merciful work and ordinance of God. So, then, we humbly
desire and earnestly beg you, as our most dearly beloved
brethren, to lay aside all sadness and all heart-burnings, if
any there be, and abstain from opposing the Divine will,
the Divine work, and the election of good men, but rather
to give thanks to God and to acquiesce with joy and willing-
ness in what has taken place.

* There is another thing which I am bound to tell you.
It may perhaps be possible to oppose the thing for a time ;
to undo it will in the long run be out of the question. I
tell you the truth when I say that notice and the intention
of this thing have already travelled far, and have by this
time no doubt reached even the Apostolic See. Take wise
advice, therefore, and charitably do without reluctance what
without doubt you will sooner or later do.^ Farewell.'

1 ' Utimini igitur sapienti consilio, ct per charitatem facite sine dilatione quod
quandoque facturi estis sine dubitatione.' I wish I could be quite certain about
the precise moral force of dilatio in this sentence. The verb differre has two
meanings. It seems when followed by an infinite always to indicate refusal.
Thus Hugh of Flavigny says of some one who refused to go to the funeral of a
certain abbot, ' ad patris ire distulit excquias ' (cliv. 397A) ; Rudolf Glaber,
concerning St. William's refusal to swear fealty to the Bishop of Vercelli,
'omnino quod hortati erant facere distuht' (cxlii, 706A) ; William of Malmesbury
(//. N. § 42) of a like refusal here in England, 'distulit fidelitatem domina:;
facere ;' and St. Odilo of St. Mayeul's obedience to a Divine intimation, ' parere
non distulit' (cxlii. 949A). And I should say that it has the same meaning when

THE EASTER COURT AT WINCHESTER. 343

All were now agreed that nothing more might, could,
would, or should be done before Easter; and so soon as
the King was known to be out of danger the peers spiritual
and temporal took each his leisurely departure from Gloucester
Castle. As they did so the muse, with appropriate but
exasperating indolence, laid aside style and tablet, disdaining
to record anything further concerning Anselm for the next
six weeks.

Then, when the Court was already assembled at Winchester,
a strange thing happened — in good grammar a viiraculum ;
in good theology, if I err not, a miracle.

The pensive and contemplative Abbot, the Bishop of
Rochester, and Dom Baldwin of Tournay were in their
lodging in an outskirt of the city of Winchester, when one
night a neighbouring roof of thatch caught fire. The flames
spread rapidly around, devouring everything ; and the dwell-
ing that sheltered the three monks was already invaded by
people intent on saving its furniture, when the mistress of the

used absolutely, as when St. Anselm on being asked to do a thing refused (W.
M. 1496A).

When, however, differrc governs the accusative of a thing it seems to signify
delay or postponement, as when the Conqueror postponed certain formalities till
he should be at Brionne, ' concessioncm atque donationcm distulit usque dum
veniret Brionium' (Bouquet, xiv. 270). This, too, seems to have been the mean-
ing given by Conrad the Salic to the word when he refused to let some causes
stand till he should have been consecrated, ' constantis est nequaquam differre
quod apte fieri valet' (cxlii. 1229D).

If, however, the accusative be of a person, not a thing, it is sometimes at least,
if not always, susceptible of the meaning ' to put off, ' and when we say ' he put
the man off,' 'distuHt hominem' (clvi. 907B).

What, then, does dilatio mean? Does it mean refusal, or postponement, or,
in some vague way, putting off? Guibert of Nogent distinctly calls St. Bruno's
refusal of a bishopric a dilatio (clvi. 855D). Eadmer, on the other hand, must
mean 'delay ' when he says of William Rufus, 'qui cum regni fastigia proeripere
gestiret et Lanfrancum .... non omnino consentaneum inveniret, verens ne
dilatio suae consecrationis inferret ei dispendium cupiti honoris' (clix. 36 IB). I
am on the whole inclined to think that Gundulf purposely employed a word which
on the face of it indicated the idea of delay, but was susceptible of another and
stronger interpretation. The official notice from the King must have reached
Le Bee soon after this letter from the Bishop of Rochester. We shall never know
what it was like, I fear.

344 THE ROYAL DEED -OF CONVEYANCE.

house desired them to touch nothing ; she had no fear, she
said ; so long as Archbishop Anselm was there she and hers
were safe. Overhearing this, Dom Baldwin repaired to Anselm
and begged him to lend his help to their hostess. ' What can
I do .-* What assistance can I render } ' was the courteous and
considerate enquiry. * Go out,' said the Fleming, ' and make
the sign of the cross before the flames ; God might perhaps
keep them back.' * For me ? No such thing.' Baldwin was
silent ; he had an idea of his own, and thought it prudent not
to repeat what their hostess had been saying. Meanwhile the
angry element came roaring on, and was soon so close as to
make them seek safety in flight. But no sooner were they
out in the stifling air than, before he had time to check them,
Gundulf and Baldwin had seized their friend's right hand, and
were making the sign of the cross with it in face of the con-
flagration. In an instant the globes of flame collapsed and
expired, leaving a house which they had seized half consumed.
Easter Sunday fell on the seventeenth of April. Ten days
later — that is to say, on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh * — the
King by the following document conveyed the temporalities
of the see of Canterbury to the Archbishop elect.

* Willielmus Rex Angliae episcopis comitibus vicecomi-
tibus ceterisque fidelibus suis Francis et Anglis, salutem.
Sciatis me dedisse Anselmo archiepiscopo archiepiscopatum
Cantuariensis ecclesie cum omnibus libertatibus et digni-
tatibus ad archiepiscopatum Cantuariensem pertinentibus
et sake et soke on stronde et on streame on woden et
on felden tolnes et beames gridbrech hamsokne forstalles
et infangenetheves et flemenefremthe et omnes alias liber-
tates in terra et mari super suos homines infra burgos et
extra et super tot theines quot ecclesie Christi concessit
Edwardus Rex cognatus mens. Volo etiam ut monachi

> Bartholomew Cotton {ffts^oria A n^licana) supplies us with the date. 'Anno
gratipe m. xc. iij. v. Kal, Maii rex Willelmus Dorobernensem archiepiscopatum
Anselmo .... concessit.'

THE TRIPLE RESISTANCE IN NORMANDY. 345

ecclesie Christi Canturie pariter habeant in omnibus terris
et tenementis suis omnes predictas libertates in terra et
mari in aquis et viis et in omnibus aliis locis que ad eos
pertinent in tantum et tarn pleniter sicut predicti ministri
exquirere debent. Portum etiam de Sandwico et omnes
exitus et consuetudines eis concedo et confirmo quas Odo
Biocensis episcopus et Cantie comes eis concessit et carta
sua confirmavit et nolo pati ut aliquis hominum se intro-
mittat de omnibus rebus que ad eos pertinent nisi ipsi
committere voluerunt nee Francus nee Anglus.' ^

The first of the attesting signatures is that of William of
Saint-Calais, Bishop of Durham, the second that of Gundulf,
Bishop of Rochester. The former was soon to prove himself
the most virulent of Anselm's enemies, as the second was
already known to be the most devoted of his friends.

Custom had no doubt assigned a term within which Duke
Robert must either grant or refuse the request for letters
dismissory which the King had sent him immediately after the
election ; and, could we but ascertain that the term was one of
forty days, we might conclude that a deed like this, executed
fifty-two days after the election, was executed in rejoinder to
a recently received rejection of that request, and in attestation
of the King's resolve to have his own way. I have no proof
to ofifer in corroboration of this idea, but I think it a highly
probable one.

Be that as it may, Duke Robert's was not the only un-
welcome despatch which had by this time been placed in the
King's hand ; for the Archbishop of Rouen was unwilling to
resign the most distinguished churchman of his province, and

' I give this document as I find it in the printed editions. A copy preserved
in the Cottonian Collection ( Titus, c. ix. ) presents some slight variations in
spelling. On the sixth line, however, it gives * archiepiscopum ' instead of
* archiepiscopatum ' ; and concludes thus, ' Portum etiam de Sandewico et omnes
exitus et consuetudines ex utraque parte eis concedo et confirmo sicut rex Cnut
eis antea dedit et codicello suo confirmavit. Domos etiam et omnes consuetudines
in villa de Sandewico eis concedo et confirmo quas Odo,' et ccetera.

346 ANS ELM'S 'NOLO EPISCOPARD

the monks of Le Bee were struggling to regain their abbot
with a fervid intensity which only too faithfully betrayed the
poignancy of their regret at having ever obliged him to visit
their English estates.

How, then, was the King of England to subdue this
threefold recalcitrancy, and with it Anselm's ?

The poor Abbot, indeed, seems to have protested that the
election could not stand, since the Christ Church monks had
had no part in it ; a technical but forlorn objection, to which
the Christ Church monks themselves most eagerly replied —
such at least is the obvious inference suggested by an extant
letter from one of them ^ — that they had not been refused
their proper part in the election ; that nothing but unavoid-
able necessity had obliged the lords spiritual and temporal
to choose a primate without their concurrence ; that their
own hopes in his regard, hopes indulged ever since Lanfranc's
death, had long been notorious ; and that, had they been
represented at Gloucester on Quadragesima Sunday, they
would have seconded the choice of the proceres regni with still
more joyful acclaim than that with which they had greeted
his arrival in our island on the seventh day of the preceding
September.

Thus foiled, and thus reduced to a bare nolo episcopari^ to
which every power and every party in the kingdom refused a
hearing, he was left to fight it out with the King unsupported
by one solitary adherent, for his allies were all in Normandy.
The issue was simple enough. * I will not be Archbishop of
Canterbury/ said the slight, pale, and attenuated monk.
' You shall be Archbishop of Canterbury,' rejoined the robust
and rubicund prince as a sinister expression played in his
terrible eye. He had found out Anselm's one weak point ;
he had singled out that point to attack ; he meant to carry
that point.

As to the triple alliance beyond sea, William had no need
» Ep. iii. 2.

THE KING'S OBSTINACY. 347

to concern himself about the Archbishop of Rouen, who
would give little trouble if let alone until other opponents had
been disposed of, but turned his more serious thoughts alter-
nately to Duke Robert's council chamber and to the chapter
house of Le Bee. He had been at peace — nominal peace —
with Duke Robert for a year or two, and the only proper way
of punishing that prince's refusal to surrender Abbot Anselm
would be to precipitate an inevitable renewal of hostilities ;
but that might not be done until he should have secured the.
alliance, or at least the neutrality, of the Count of Flanders ;
not, that is to say — for so the event proved — before the end
of July ; and meanwhile Robert Courthose was out of harm's
reach. If, however, the monks of Le Bee could be made to
yield, the Duke's mortification on finding himself betrayed by
his favourite monastery would be a delightful subject for the
royal heart to muse upon, and the thought of dealing a moral
infliction of the kind was all the dearer inasmuch as whatever
the material damage it might be in the power of the sword to
inflict was already bespoken in another quarrel.

By the time, therefore, that the deliberations of the council
at Winchester were terminated, the King had already resolved
to aim specifically at two objects — the breaking of Anselm's
obstinacy and the breaking of the obstinacy of Anselm's
religious.

The next month, that of May, is barren of record ; and,
indeed, the muse may have found nothing to chronicle. The
King was biding his time, and Anselm in England, and
Anselm's monks in Normandy, were anxiously awaiting that
relief of their common trouble which they saw that only
Heaven could send.

But rumour was by no means idle, and, as though there
were not already reasons enough why the King should be set
upon forcing Anselm's acquiescence, supplied the quidnuncs
with another. It was incredible, so they argued, that even
the combined influences of superstition, of jealousy, of self-

348 'TRANSEAT CALIX ISTE:

will, and, though last not least, of respect, however reluctant,
for the rights of his peers, should have kept the King so long
firm to his resolve, had not his master passion been in league
with them. During the four years just ending he had been
making of their Jerusalem a heap of stones, and it was in-
credible he should now suddenly surcease, except to enthrone
himself upon the ruins. Anselm, they continued, was a man
of contemplation, study, and prayer ; his heart, and mind,
and soul, and strength were all set on God ; as to secular
cares and the world's business, he shunned them all ; and as
to money, houses, or lands, school himself as he might for
a few awkward weeks to master the condition of the tempor-
alities of the see of Canterbury, when once the mitre should
sit easily on that ethereal brow, the sublime intellect within
would sicken of the tedium of bending to commercial details
infinitely trivial, would soar indignant to her ancient sacred
speculative heights, and would count it shame henceforth to
waste her energies on a tenement, a manor, or a fief. And
meanwhile, they continued, the King would contrive, en-
croaching here, pilfering there, confiscating at a third point,
under pretext of consuetudinary right and under cover of
judge-made law, to secure to himself little by little broad
lands, houses, and revenues, which thenceforth would remain
in royal hands till the crack of doom.

All this gossip found its way to Canterbury ; but some of
the Christ Church monks shook their heads, and said they
scarcely took so gloomy a view of the future. Meanwhile
the thirteenth week from the election had ended, and it was
Whit Sunday. A day or two, and King and council were at
work again ; Anselm trembling for his fate, his monks at Le
Bee trembling also. A fortnight more, and Lanfranc had
now been dead four years. A few days more and the leases
of the Canterbury lands began to fall in, first one, then
another. And then, then, then, men learned what the cun-
ning prince had all along been planning ; and Anselm, poor

FRESH WOES FALL ON CANTERBURY. 349

Anselm, heard what was even now a-doing, recalled the King's
sinister glance at Winchester, and in his anguish cried out, in
the words of the anguish of a Divine Exemplar, 'If it be
possible let this chalice pass away from me.'

I know not how to gauge the cruelty of the blow. Per-
haps the cruellest thing about it was that it was dealt at the
most sensitive part of Anselm's nature, and that the royal
miscreant who dealt it gloated over the smart he caused with
all the keen satisfaction of a man who had carried the inflic-
tion of moral anguish to the perfection of a science. Kinsman
of the prince who could punish Herlwin by ruining his poor
dependents, and son of the prince who could punish Lanfranc
by burning the corn of his innocent and helpless friends,
William Rufus knew perfectly well what he was doing when
he pressed the vice of extortion tighter down than ever on
every tenement of the Canterbury property. After a day or
two of breathing time, a day or two of hope, every occupant
of the Canterbury domains found himself suddenly crushed
under demands that he could scarcely satisfy and live — the
horrors of that opening fifth year have been compared to the
evisceration of a criminal who had already undergone the
doom of being flayed alive — and the only answer vouchsafed
by the royal myrmidons to the cries and tears and maledic-
tions of the woe-begone victims was, that the fault was
Anselm's ; that the lands had been conveyed to him, that he
had refused to take them up, but that if he chose to do so
all would be well. And Anselm was the man who had so
delicately seized the golden grain in the character of Elphegc,
the dread of doing harm to souls ; Anselm was the man who
had risked grieving his sick friend at Chester from the same
dread, the dread of doing harm to souls. Whither, then,
whither could he turn with all this misery set to his charge ?
Whither, whither could he turn, when the very monks of
Christ Church, who had almost worshipped his name, made
themselves the vehicle of a thousand reproaches 1 ' Reflect,'

350 FRESH WOES MENACE LE BEC.

they wrote to him, ^ reflect, dear friend. These are the
murmurs launched at you : — " Is this the man we were so
glad about ? Is this the man all the world has been talking
about? Why, he has played us false. He has destroyed
our souls." And know this : there will be no end to it so long
as you hold out.' ' O Omnipotent God,' they even dared to
write, 'whoever it be that has set this obstacle in Anselm's
way, may he be anathema among men.' Whither, then,
whither could he turn.!* Only to Him who knows all our
griefs and counts all our tears, and pray that, unless it were
impossible to the Uncreated Wisdom to whom is no im-
possible, the thing he so much dreaded might be averted
from him.

Whilst he was thus writhing from the first blow another
crueller than it succeeded ; a threat, and no less a threat than
this, that, unless he yielded, the monks at Le Bee should
learn the meaning of the phrase royal retribution. What !
Were the estates in England that had kept the poor men
from starvation to be escheated } And when war broke out,
which would happen soon, were fire and sword and engine of
destruction to turn Le Bee into a voiceless wild } Yes, that
was the meaning.

This broke him. After miracles of prudence and forti-
tude prolonged through four months of struggle against
hopeless odds, there was nothing for it but surrender, and he
despatched Dom Baldwin to Le Bee with a letter, part of
which needed the bearer's vivA voce exposition to elucidate
what lay between the lines, for such embassies were beset
with danger; whilst part was intelligible enough without
interpreter. It contained the following passages : —

' As to their election of me, or, in plain words, their
forcible seizure of my person, I have thus far resisted
as best I could ; but now, willing or not, I am forced to
own that day by day the judgments of God hedge me in

'FIAT VOLUNTAS TUAJ 351

closer and closer, thwarting all my efforts ; and I am at last
convinced that there is no conceivable and no possible way
of escape, and that neither I nor anyone else can any
longer oppose the royal resolution without doing a grievous
general harm both to the bodies and the souls of others,
and without provoking the wrath of God. The truth is
that I am vanquished by the strong arm not of man, but
of God, against whom there is neither prudence nor forti-
tude ; and am satisfied that all that remains for me to do,
now that I have prayed as best I might, and striven as
best I could, that, if it were possible, this cup might pass
away from me undrained, and I have seen my prayer cast
out and my efforts broken, is to turn at last to God and cry,
" Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt." . . . Things
have come to this — and I own the hand of God in all —
that I must accept one of two alternatives : either to be
of service and use to you and many others, or, from no
lack of will, but from sheer want of power, to be of no use
or service, whether to myself, to you, or to anyone.

* But if, by holding out, you make me choose the
latter of them, you will by so doing cause my old age to
be dragged out and worn away in a grief that nothing can
medicine, so great and manifold will be the consequent
evils ; evils, let me add, which will seem to be attributed to
you, and to me even, by those who do not at this moment
apprehend them.'

The full meaning of all this will never be known.

But enough. Victory was with the King.

In reply to the letter just quoted Anselm's monks sent
their heart-broken abbot a letter of release indeed, but a
letter so full of emotion as to be scarcely fit for the King's
perusal ; and well it was for them that, whether by accident
or from precaution, their courier was not intercepted upon
landing in England. There were scalding words in that letter

352 ANSELM RECEIVES A LETTER FROM LE BEC.

which would have ruined them had an unfriendly eye beheld
it. Alas for us, though, that Anselm should have destroyed
it ! But he did well.

He wrote back, therefore, entreating them to send two
letters, one to the King, the other to himself, and added : —

* I strongly advise you in your letter to the King to
do what really is the right thing. Let him see that you
are not so much thinking of your own will as submitting
to the will of God ; and be careful not to forfeit the royal
favour by your manner of expressing yourselves. With-
out that favour you cannot exist, and wilfully to forego it
would be worse than useless — would ruin you, and ruin
you utterly. Do not do that ; do not by so doing charge
my heart with a fresh load, for it is already freighted
beyond its strength.'

These admonitions require no comment.

As to the Duke's letter to Anselm, there would seem to
have been that in it which the charity of the recipient obliged
him to consign to oblivion. Robert was very sore ; indeed, so
sore as to allow his chivalry the dishonour of dropping bitter-
ness into Anselm's wounds by an insinuation the cruelty of
which would, he knew, give infinite pain. But if he was the
Red King's brother he was the Conqueror's son, and taking
shame to himself as the fit of chagrin passed off begged
forgiveness of the wrong. ^

Archbishop William's letter is extant in the * Historia
Novorum,' and Anselm's care has preserved us the final
answer of his monks. '^ On receiving news of the Duke's con-
sent and the Archbishop's, so runs the latter document, they

» < Gratia Dei faciente dominus noster princeps Northmannorum misit mihi
litteras plenas magna benignitate et excusatione sui, si quid aut credidit aut dixit
de me aliter quam decuit amore meo et dolore de amissione mea cogente ob meam
ad archiepiscopatum electionem.' — Ep. iii. 15.

2 Their letter to the King must have perished like so many other documents
which one would give anything to be able to recall to existence.

ABBOT ANSELM SENDS BACK HIS CROSIER. 353

assembled in chapter, and there gave, each by each, and each
in his turn, as the president called upon him by name to do so,
their several opinions. Those opinions were as various as the
terms in which they were expressed. ' One party,' it continues,
* although deeply grieved and much moved at the thought of
your unparalleled and tender love and devotion to us, yet,
urged by the fear of God, whose all-wise providence they
believe to have brought the thing about, willingly concede
what is asked, and do so for the honour and advantage of the
Church of God and in accordance with your advice. The
other party adhere to their own more enthusiastic judgment,
and think it more trustworthy than your own ; they think it a
better judgment, and, urged by love of you, adhere to it
so obstinately as utterly to refuse on any account to yield to
the persuasions of any of their brethren whether older or
younger. Which side outnumbers the other, or which out-
weighs the other by the collective wisdom of its constituent
members, Dom Lanfranc,' who was present at the chapter,
and saw and heard all that was done and said, will give you a
very full and sufficient account. We give you this brief and
succinct recital of what has taken place because the bearer
presses us to do so. May Almighty God dispose your life in
His good pleasure, and preserve it long to the common benefit
and joy of His faithful people. Amen.'

Some three weeks after the despatch of the letters dismissory
from Le Bee, and early on the morning of Monday, the fifteenth
of August, the well-known and anxiously expected form of
Dom Girard might have been seen riding down the silent and

' The author of Neustria Pia (p. 170) would seem to think that this was the
Lanfranc who was intruded into the abbacy of St. Wandrille's in 1089. The
Chronicon Fontanellense, on the other hand, declares that the intruder died in
1091. If the Lanfranc of this letter was really a monk of I^e Bee, then he was
the Archbishop's erring nephew ; but we have no proof that he was, and he
is rather described as a witness of the proceedings than as a participator in them.
For surely it is far more likely that there should have been another Lanfranc
somewhere than that the Fontenelle chronicler should have made so grievous a
blunder in his dates. Can he have been a Christ Church monk ?

VOL. I. A A

354 THE ABBOT'S LETTER TO HIS MONKS.

dew-drenched valley of Le Bee. He must have ridden all
night, aided through the space between twilight and twilight
by a moon then at her brightest, and was charged with
a burden the carriage of which had not been unattended
with risk from surprises on the way. That burden was not
indeed the pastoral staff of Anselm, but that without which
the pastoral staff was valueless ; the ipsissimum insigne of
the abbatial office ; the carved crook, that is to say, of what
material formed I know not, except that it can scarcely have
been of ivory, with which his staff had been surmounted.* It
had once been Herlwin's ; for nearly fifteen years it had been
Anselm's ; but on that sad morning, even though a grace
clung to it such as once clung to the residuary mantle of the
prophet, it was to Anselm's children now no more the symbol
of his paternal, gentle sway, but the announcement of an
irreparable loss and an inconsolable orphanage.

At the conclusion of prime all proceeded to the chapter
house, and in a few minutes Dom Maurice, our old friend
to whom we owe the ' Monologion,' was reading to them
as best he might a letter which Dom Girard had deli-
vered to the prior on arriving. It contained the following
passages : — ^

' Milo Crispin, writing of Anselm's successor at Le Bee, says, * Beato abbate
Anselmo in Angliam translate et abbati facto cujus fastigmm virgce prsedictus
Willelmus .... suscipere meruit.'

And iht proces-verbal on the opening of Herlwin's coffin in 1707 describes the
crosier as n! ay ant pas de bout recourbe.

I hope I have not been presumptuous in drawing a very obvious inference.

If the Jumieges portrait may be trusted — I, for one, have no doubt that it
m^Ly—ihefastigiuj/i virgce can scarcely have been of elaborate workmanship. It
had been used by Herlwin, and may have been of bone. Bishop Sicard of
Cremona gives the following description of the crosier in his Mitrale (cxiii. 79D) :
• Hie ergo baculus ex osse et ligno conficitur, quce crystallina vel aurata sphterula
conjunguntur. Os superius recurvatur; lignum inferius ferro acuitur, modice
tamen retunditur. Os et lignum arte rasili poliuntur.'

2 There is another letter {Ep. iii. 10) on this subject, addressed to the Bishop
of Evreux, which I would most earnestly commend to the careful attention of the
reader. I dare not spoil it by giving extracts from it ; and it is, I fear, too long
for insertion in toto. The writer in one passage seems to allude to his director.
Who that director was we have, I fear, no means of knowing.

THE ABBOT JUSTIFIES HIS CONDUCT. 355

* I hear that there are some ' — who they are God knows
— who either feign of malice, or suspect of ignorance, or are
urged by an unthinking sorrow to assert, that I am not so
much forced into the archiepiscopate by religious necessity
as drawn to it by corrupt greed of power. I do not know
how I can assure them of the secret of my own conscience
in this thing, if they are not already satisfied of the truth
from my past life and converse. I have worn the monk's
habit for full three-and-thirty years, three of them without
preferment, fifteen as prior, fifteen as abbot ; and all the
good men that have known me during all that period have
been kind enough to think well of me from no efifort on my
part, but from the goodness of God ; and those who have
known me best and closest have been kindest of all in their
good thought of me, and none of them has ever witnessed
any act of mine whence he could conclude that I took
pleasure in being set over other men. What am I to do,
then "> How shall I drive ofT and crush this false and
hateful suspicion, lest it hurt the souls of those who
erewhile loved me in the love of God, by lessening their
charity ; or lest it hurt the souls of those whom any
advice or any example of mine, how worthless soever,
might else have profited, by making them believe that I
am worse than I am ; or lest it hurt not only the souls of
these but those of others who do not know me and may
hear this report, by setting a bad example before them for
imitation } O God, Thou who knowest all things, I do not
justify myself by the scrutiny of Thine own strict judgment.

But, indeed, the whole group of extant letters written on this occasion should be
carefully studied. They are Epp. iii. i, 4, 7, and iv. 116.

' This refers to Duke Robert ; not of necessity to any but he, for it was usual
with St. Anselm to employ the plural for the singular when he did not wish to
mention names. That any of Anselm's monks should have thus spoken is simply
incredible. The Dean of St. Paul's says (p. 184), ' There were some (of the monks)
who whispered complaints of his ambition and self-seeking. ' He had neither the
one nor the other ; and in the whole of the correspondence there is not a syllable
to be found in justification of the Dean's assertion.

A A2

356 THE ABBOT LAYS BARE HIS CONSCIENCE.

because Thy great apostle, though he said '^ nihil mihi
consciiis Slim" yet added immediately, " Sed non in hoc
jtistificatus sum^ qui autein jndicat me Dominus est" And
that simple and upright man who feared God and shrank
from evil, to whom, by Thine own witness, there was not
the like on this earth, said, ^^verehar omnia opera meaV
But as my heart reads my conscience I read it out before
Thee, O my God, that all who peruse or hear this letter may
know without misgiving that I am writing it in the light of
Thine eye.'

The reader will forgive me for interrupting him. What
follows is not so much part of the letter as a transcript upon
parchment of the saint's examination of conscience in the
presence of Almighty God, and thus one of the most solemn
passages, if not the most solemn, in his whole corre-
spondence.

* Thou, Lord, seest, and be Thou my witness, that I do
not know, as my conscience tells me, what love of anything
which Thy servant, a despiser of the world, ought to despise,
it is that can be attracting me to consent to become an
archbishop or binding me to such consent ; and that, could
I only do it without violating that obedience and charity
which I desire, since they are Thy gift, to keep for Thy
sake, I would rather live a life of service and obedience as a
simple monk under the rule of a prelate than be lord over
others, or be set above them, whether to guide their
souls or to support their bodies, or than gain any earthly
dignity. Thou seest, and be Thou my witness, that, as
my conscience tells me, I know not how I can without
sin break myself loose from the firm resolve of those who
have elected me,^ and that fear of Thee and the chanty

' These words make it clear enough, for they are written under circumstances
of most deep solemnity, that Anselm had been duly elected. This, however, has
been denied. The reader will find a note on the subject in the Appendix.

THE ABBOT'S WORDS OF FAREWELL. 357

and obedience which I owe to Thee and Thy Church so
compel and bind me that I dare not persist in opposing
their pious prayers and the strong desire they have
evinced. O Lord, if my conscience deceives me, show
Thyself to me, and correct me ; and, whether it please
Thee that men's enterprise in this their election of me
succeed or that it fail, lead me in Thy way, and I shall
walk in Thy Truth. O Lord, Thou seest my conscience ;
be Thou therefore my Witness to those who think ill
about me, and show it to them, lest they harm their own or
another's soul in judging of it amiss.'

The writer now resumes his letters, and, addressing him-
self again to his children in religion, proceeds as follows : —

' So now, my dearest brethren, you have heard all that
my conscience has to say about my quest, or my dread,
of the archbishopric. And if I knowingly lie to God, I
know not to whom I am to speak the truth. And if,
notwithstanding what I have just said on this subject,
calling upon God to bear me witness, anyone should,
either by direct phrase or by suggestive hint, miscommend
me to another, I think that God will be with me against
him, and will answer to him for me ; but I will comfort
myself meanwhile in the testimony of God. ... I add
a few words for your comfort. My dearest brethren,
I pray you not to be distressed above measure at our
separation. Let not your hope be in man, but in God,
because if I have been of any good to you it was not my
doing, but His. Many, almost all, of you came to Le Bee
on my account, but none of you took the habit at my
instance, nor did you make your vows to God in the hope
of any reward that I could give. From Him, then, to
whom you gave all you had, expect all that you need.
Cast your care on the Lord, and He will nourish you.
Bend all your thought to the serving of Him, and He will

358 THE STORY OF THE ABBACY ENDED.

Himself take all your care upon Himself, and nourish
you. ... To our Lord Jesus Christ, and His kind
mother Mary, and St. Peter to whom He committed
His sheep, and to St. Benedict whose rule you profess,
and to all the other saints of God do I commend you,
my dearest brethren ; and, by their merits and intercessions,
may He who redeemed you be your Abbot and your Guide,
and, when this life is done, bring you to reign with Him in
His kingdom. There may it be mine to see you and
rejoice with you for ever, through His mercy who is God
blessed for ever. Amen.

* Many of you whom I have so dearly and affectionately
loved that each was prone to think himself the best beloved
are wondering why I do not write something to each of
them as a souvenir of our friendship. The reason is not
that I have forgotten them, but that there are too many of
them. . . . All I say at present is, let them remember
that my sole object in thus loving them was that they might
love God and their own souls. They know it well ; and
what I desire of one and all of you, and beg, and admonish,
and counsel one and all of you, is, do so still ; do so, and
my love of you can never be impaired. Choose yourselves a
new abbot without delay. . . .'

Let us pause here. The story of Anselm's abbacy is
ended.

Book IV.

ST. ANSELM ARCHBISHOP ELECT OF
CANTERBURY.

36i

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS : ST. ANSELM'S ACCEPTANCE
OF THE PRIMACY.

Pope Gregory VII. died on the twenty-fifth of May, 1085 ;
Archbishop Lanfranc died on the twenty-eighth of May,
1089. During the interval two Pontiffs, Victor III. and
Urban II., mounted the Apostolic throne ; but neither of
them was ever recognised, officially at least, in England.
How was this ?

Shortly before his death, St. Gregory VII., when asked by
the bishops and cardinals who stood about him to direct
them in their choice of a successor, advised them to choose
Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, a monk in whom the
qualities of prudence and zeal were very happily blended,
and who, besides holding the first rank among the cardinal
priests of the Roman Church, was fortunate enough to enjoy
the friendship and confidence of the princes of central and
southern Italy. But, in default of Desiderius, they were
without delay to select the first that could be had of three
prelates whom the dying Pontiff now proceeded to name —
the Archbishop of Lyons, the Bishop of Ostia, and the Bishop
of Lucca.

Some weeks after Gregory's death the Pontificate was
offered to Desiderius ; but he refused the honour with so
successful an obstinacy that no efficient efforts were made for
his appointment before the following Lent. But, even so,
and even then, fresh delays were interposed, and it was only
on the Whit Sunday of 1086 that the clergy and people of

362 ELECTION OF POPE VICTOR IIL

Rome, disregarding the Abbot's remonstrances, took him by
force, and, with the cardinals at their head, carried him into
the Church of Santa Lucia, at the foot of the Palatine, where
they elected him Pope and gave him the name of Victor III.
But he was not yet subdued ; for, although he consented to
wear the blood-red robe such as now distinguishes the
members of the Sacred College, he would not allow himself
to be decked in the auguster garment of white which con-
stituted the distinctive dress of the successors of the Apostle ;
and, daring in the course of a few days to retract his conces-
sion, forbade the Papal cross to be carried before him, and
announced his resolution of courting once more the seclusion
of Monte Cassino.

An effort to carry him thence to Rome for coronation
having been thwarted, in part by his own entreaties, in part
by the approaching heat of summer, he had his own way for
the remainder of the year and until the middle of the following
Lent — the Lent of 1087 — when on Sunday, the twenty-first
of March, he so far yielded to the instances and prayers of
Cenci, the Roman prefect, of the Roman nobles, and of most
if not all of the princes and bishops of central and southern
Italy, as to resume the discarded cross and purple. But,
even so, he returned without delay to his monastery ; and it
was only on the ninth of May, and within a week or two of
the second anniversary of the late Pope's death, that he at
last received episcopal consecration.

He spent a week in Rome and then returned to Monte
Cassino.

He came back to the Eternal City, it is true, in the following
month, but only to find it in the hands of the Imperial faction,
and the Feast of the Apostles was no sooner over than he
sought the safety he needed and the solitude he loved in the
territory of a friendly prince and in his own cloister.

In the month of August he opened a synod at Benevento,
but before its work was done he was struck down by a

A CONFLICTING ACCOUNT, 363

malady which had for some time troubled him, and was
carried at once to Monte Cassino, where, on the sixteenth of
September, and after a pontificate of four months from his
consecration, he expired.

Meanwhile a very strange account of the election of the
Abbot of Monte Cassino to the Papacy had been spread
abroad by no less a personage than the Archbishop of Lyons,
who had for many years, and until the death of St. Gregory,
sustained the supplementary dignity of Papal Legate for
all Gaul. The Archbishop ' declared that, arriving in Rome
too late to witness the first election of Desiderius in the
summer of 1086, he had followed him to his monastery, and
there from his own mouth heard things which on no other
authority would he have believed, besides a variety of
scandalous stories about him communicated by trustworthy
witnesses ; that in the Lent of 1087 he had been requested
by competent authority to join in choosing some suitable
person as Pope, and had partially succeeded in thwarting the
arts of the Abbot to ensure re-election, when the Abbot, who
had meanwhile composed the reluctance of the official con-
secrator, procured consecration and slipped himself into the
Papal chair. The Archbishop's story ends thus : — * After
his consecration by the Bishop of Ostia he attempted to say
mass at St. Peter's, but was struck by the hand of God
infra actionem. Whereupon, acknowledging too late his sin,
he abdicated the Papacy, and, summoning such of his monks
as were about him, desired them to carry him to Monte
Cassino, and bury him there in the chapter house with the
obsequies proper to an abbot, not those proper to a Pope.'

Such was the story sent by the Archbishop of Lyons in
or about the July of 1087 to the Marchioness Matilda of
Tuscany. The truth or falsehood of its earlier portion is not
of present importance ; but that which it just now concerns
us to notice, and to notice very carefully, is that, although
* Hugh of Flavigny in his Chronicon gives the same account.

364 DEATH OF VICTOR III.

Archbishop Hugh, writing in the summer of 1087, does not
categorically announce Victor's death, he yet distinctly states
that, being seized with a mortal illness within a few days of
his consecration, Victor had immediately resigned the Papacy.

What rumours may meanwhile have reached England we
have no means of ascertaining ; but, unless Orderic ^ was in
this instance exceptionally careless, that diligent historian
cannot have been much more fortunate than the Archbishop
of Lyons, for long after the event he declared that Victor
was seized with diarrhoea on the sixteenth of May, seven
days after his consecration, and that he died in the following
August.

On the whole, then, we may fairly assume that within a
week or ten days after Lanfranc heard of Victor's consecra-
tion a report reached him, certainly of Victor's serious illness,
possibly of his death ; in which case, apart from the obvious
considerations that he was in England whilst the Conqueror
was in Normandy, that he could not with decency discredit
an account accepted by the Legate of that vast territory
through which ran the highway from Rome to Canterbury,
and that the Conqueror was even now languishing under a
dangerous malady or dying of a fatal wound, and not in a
condition to be troubled with conflicting or useless rumours,
his only reasonable course was to await trustworthy informa-
tion on the state of affairs in Rome.

And if the report of Victor's abdication in the middle of
May, which, false as it was, reached Lanfranc by the end of July,
was followed at the end of October by the report, false as it was,
of Victor's death in August, there was nothing for him to do
but to await the announcement of a successor to the vacant
Pontificate. And even if on the receipt of the first false
news he had sent immediately to Italy to test its truth, even
so, his messenger could scarcely have reached Monte Cassino
before the very day of the real death of Victor.
1 o, V. iii. 306.

THE CONQUEROR'S FOUR ' CONSUETUDINES: 365

Let us now turn our attention more particularly to
England.

There is good reason to believe that during the first six or
seven months of the Red King's reign — he ascended the throne
at the Michaelmas of 1087, at a moment when nobody could
say whether or not there was a Pope for him either to acknow-
ledge or to disown — his relations with Archbishop Lanfranc
were on the whole pacific. He sought and acquiesced in the
Primate's counsels on the outbreak and on the suppression of
Bishop Odo's conspiracy ; and, if a hint given by William of
Malmesbury may be taken as guide, it was not until after the
reconciliation at Whitsuntide that he betrayed any resentment
against the Churchman, when, as is not improbable, it occurred
to him, and occurred too late, that he would have done well
to inflict a fine on his rebellious barons before receiving them
back to favour ; in other words, that he had erred, and erred
to his own pecuniary damage, in listening to the Primate's
counsels of mercy.

But what was the occasion, and what the date, of the first
rupture between William Rufus and Archbishop Lanfranc }
As to these, since, in the absence of certain information, we
must be satisfied to make the most probable guess we can,
we may, I think, assume it as likely that the occasion was the
first of any gravity that next presented itself ; for it is
notorious that the wrath of the Red Prince was ever ready and
ever swift ; and further, that the occasion was the first of any
gravity that next presented itself upon which the Primate
would deem it his duty to remind the prince of the oaths he
had taken ; the first occasion, that is to say, upon which a
difference would be likely to arise between them, not upon
William's conduct as a man, but upon his conduct as King.
For it was then that the memorable speech was made, * Who
can keep *11 his promises } '

William the Conqueror had imposed upon this country
four pretensions inherited by him, whether in germ or in their

366 ACCESSION OF POPE URBAN IL

fulness, from his forefathers, the Dukes of Normandy. One
was that no one in the whole of his dominion should acknow-
ledge a duly appointed Bishop of Rome as Pope except at his
bidding ; another, that no one should receive a letter from the
Roman Pontiff unless it had first been shown to him ; a third
was that the Primate, when holding a general council of the
bishops, should bid and should forbid nothing but in pursuance
of the royal initiation ; the last was that no bishop might
prosecute a tenant-in-chief, or a servant of the Crown, for
incest, adultery, or other capitate crimen, or excommunicate
or otherwise punish him for the same, without authorisation
from the sovereign. These claims are distinctly set forth by
Eadmer, and should be carefully borne in mind as we
follow him page after page through the ' Historia Novorum.*
Now, such was the state of England at the moment with
which we are concerned, the Whitsuntide of 1088, that
William Rufus and Lanfranc can scarcely have come into
collision upon the third or fourth of these claims. The
country was too distracted, and the King too uneasy, for
Lanfranc to think of summoning a national council ; nor
was the Churchman likely to unsheath the sharp edge of
justice when he had so recently quelled an insurrection by
the blunter sword of mercy. Besides, news of the highest
importance had just come from Rome — news of the election
of a new Pope, Urban II. — and prudence informed him that,
inasmuch as it is wise to confront grave difficulties one at a
time, he must not anticipate and enhance an apparently
inevitable trouble by provoking others which might well be left
to slumber. Rumours of the election of Urban must have
reached England early in May ; ' and the Whitsuntide Court

' Urban was elected on the twelfth of March, 1088. He wrote to Lanfranc
announcing his election on the tenth of April, twenty-nine days later. Allowing
nine weeks for the journey from Terracina to Westminster, we may conclude
that the letter was delivered about the twelfth of June.

A practised courier would perform the journey by land from Rome to Wissant
in six weeks ; but the messenger sent on this occasion would probably require a

POPE URBAN' S LETTER TO ARCHBISHOP LANFRANC, 367

must have been in full session at the very moment when a
letter from the new Pope, written at Terracina on the tenth
of April, and forwarded in all haste from Canterbury, was
delivered to the Primate. That letter was, I suspect, all that
was needed to set the combustible temper of the King in a
blaze. If Lanfranc read it without first showing it to the
King, a royal consuetudo was violated ; if he showed it to the
King before reading it, the King had something of some
moment to say about the writer. Who was this Otto of Ostia
that he should call himself servtis servorimi Dei when Guibert,
Archbishop of Ravenna, had long ago been made Pope by the
Emperor ? And even if one was as much Pope as the other,
or if Otto were Pope and not Guibert, or Guibert Pope and
not Otto, who and what was an Archbishop of Canterbury
that he should dare to speak on the subject when, for England
at least, the decision on such a matter was the personal prero-
gative of the King of the English, and of no other man } It
was thus that William Rufus spoke to Lanfranc's successor in
the January of 1094. Can there be a doubt that he spoke
thus to Lanfranc in the June of 1088 }

On the whole, then, I suspect that this letter from
Urban II. was the occasion of the rupture between William
Rufus and Lanfranc, who, forecasting in an instant all the
miseries that must ensue to England from the unopposed
assertion of this new and monstrous claim, reminded the prince
of the engagement in virtue of which he had received the
crown. The prince's reply is too well known to be repeated.

few clays more, and we may fairly allow seven weeks for the journey by land
from Terracina to the shores of Picardy. Such, however, were the dangers
which beset the road through Lombardy that the sub-deacon Roger would be
likely to avoid the ordinary route, and make his way into Gaul by crossing the
Mediterranean ; in which case we must add a few days to our seven weeks. And
when he reached Wissant he was, not improbably, detained there by the ver}'
wind which carried Bishop Odo and his party back from England. I conclude,
then, that the sub-deacon Roger can scarcely, even under favourable circum-
stances, have reached Dover before Whitsunday, and that in all probability he
only landed in time to reach Westminster on the octave of the festival.

368 THE RED KING'S DEFIANCE OF LANFRANC.

Lanfranc was checkmated, and it is hard to see what
course of energetic action was now open to him.^ Bowed
down with length of days — for he had exceeded by more than
a decade the longer span of life allowed to us by the Psalmist
— the ancient prelate prayed as he had prayed sixteen
years before, when things, dark as they might be, were bright-
ness itself to the storm which he now saw gathering, and
awaited his end. What sort of storm it was to be we shall
see in the following pages ; what sort of storm it was to be
he divined, if any could divine. The only lever by which he
could have checked the omnipotence of the tyrant's capacity
for mischief had snapped in his hand, and there was no
mending it. The King had now categorically declared that
kings of England were not to be outdone by kings of Ger-
many, and that no archbishop of his should obey the Pope
save at his behest. What, then, could the old man do against
the petulant youth } The lever had broken in his hand, and
there was no replacing it by another. So he prayed as he
had prayed sixteen years ago, 'that God would deliver his
soul from her fleshly prison.' ^ He prayed as he had prayed,
and by the next Whitsuntide the throne over which he had
shed a new lustre stood vacant in Canterbury Cathedral.

We can scarcely, I repeat, be mistaken in assuming that

' There is a curious passage in Anselm's correspondence {Ep. ii. 44) which
shows that between his departure from England after the Whitsuntide Court
of 1088 and his arrival at Le Bee about the eleventh of July he had been
into France — the kingdom of France, which lay south of Normandy. Such
a detour on his way home can scarcely have been contemplated when he left
Le Bee in the spring ; and his way of alluding to it shows that there is
something to be read between the lines. What, then, can have taken
him into France ? What can have happened in England to take him into
France? What can have happened in England to hurry him away to France,
where he seems to have spent the last week of June ? I think I can guess.
I suspect that Lanfranc, forbidden by the King to write to the Pope, sent Ansclm
in all haste out of the country charged with a letter or a message to some prelate in
France, the contents of which letter, or the purport of which message, were by
that prelate to be transmitted to the Pontiff. This is no fanciful guess. Anselm
himself did the very same sort of thing some six years later when himself set in that
very predicament. "^ Lanfranc, Ep, 43,

A ROYAL 'CONSUETUDO: 369

the letter announcing Urban's accession reached England by
the middle of June ; and were we only certain that the Fire-
brand had by that time been taken into William's closer
confidence, and, further, that Lanfranc fell ill in the latter
part of June, we might then, I think, accept the account
which I have hazarded of the rupture between King and
Primate as possessing the highest degree of moral certainty
that can reasonably be desired for it ; ^ for it is scarcely con-
ceivable that when once the Red King had resolved upon
asserting the quasi-imperial pretensions ^ which were to give
a distinctive character to his reign he should neglect his first
opportunity of doing so.

To assert those pretensions and thus germanise England
he had a most inviting instrument ready to hand in the first
of the four consuetudines which Eadmer has described to us ;
the consiietiido in virtue of which his ducal forefathers had
claimed the right of taking the initiative in the recognition of
a duly appointed Pope, pretending, as it would seem, that
the disciplinary authority of the Holy See was meanwhile in
their dominions void. Or rather, availing himself of this
constietudo, he converted it into something which was worse
in degree and worse in kind as well, and, not satisfied with
making England wait till he should recognise a new Pope,
propounded it to be his right to impose upon his subjects as
Pope for them whom he would.

But I am anticipating, and at present it is enough to

' Anselm's letter (ii. 53) in which he condoles with him on his illness must
have l)een written soon after receipt of the news, but was not written (see Ep.
ii. 44) until after the eleventh of July. The news, however, of Lanfranc's illness
was accompanied, it would appear, by a request from him de condiicta Langobar-
dorwn \ and if, as is probable, Lombards were wanted for the building of Rochester
Castle (see the whole story in Anglia Sacra, ii. 329), we may assume that it left
England within a few weeks after Whitsuntide. All tends to prove that Lanfranc
fell ill soon after the receipt of the Pope's letter.

2 ' Dicebat imperator sui officii esse quem vellet papam eligere nee erat alterius
apostolicum etiam nominare. Rex Willelmus allegavit eandem rationem quod
nullus archiepiscopus vel episcopus regni sui curise Romanse vel Papse subesset.'
— Matthew's Paris, Hist. Major.

VOL. I. B B

370 THE RED KING'S DESIGNS ON CANTERBURY.

know that whatever doubt he may have affected to entertain
as to the validity of Pope Urban's election was a flimsy
pretence ; for had he had a real doubt — a real and honest
doubt — he would scarcely have allowed — as we shall soon
see that he did — six years and a half to pass away before
making a first effort to solve it.

On reviewing, then, the King's conduct during the interval
between the first recorded breach of his oath in 1088 and
Anselm's acceptance of the primacy in 1093, we see that the
chief grounds of apprehension for the future are referable to
three lines of conduct : first, the royal confiscation of the
Canterbury revenues ; secondly, the royal intolerance of the
constitutional tradition which had made the Primate of Britain
official guardian of the King's conscience ; and thirdly, the
royal purpose of weakening the relations with the successor
of Peter, which had made the kingdom of England from its
earliest days an integral portion of Catholic Christendom.
In these three designs the Red King was abetted by as many
privy counsellors — Renouf the Firebrand ; Robert, Count of
Meulan; and William of Saint-Calais, Bishop of -Durham.
These three men were the respective agents of his designs on
the proprietary rights of the holder of the Archbishopric of
Canterbury, on the constitution of the realm, and on the
religion of the people of England.

Let us now resume the history of the Archbishop
elect.

It was in the summer of 1093, and about the middle of
July, that, bent into resignation to the will of Heaven, Anselm
breathed forth his fiat voluntas tua ; and it was during the
first ten days of August that he despatched Dom Girard to
Le Bee with the valedictory letter quoted in the last chapter.
Between the two events, however, and about the end of July,
he had an interview of some importance with the sovereign.
But, strange to say, on the last night of the month a flaming
meteor swept the firmament ; and as it glid along the amazed

THE INTERVIEW AT ROCHESTER. 371

beholders saw, or thought they saw, that it bore the form of
a pastoral staff. What might that fiery crosier mean ?

The interview took place at Rochester. The King had
gone there, I imagine, to inspect the castle which Gundulf
had undertaken to build for him five years ago, and was on
his way home from Dover, where he had just held an inter-
view with the Count of Flanders. And assuredly, if he had
with him the text of some such treaty as was concluded with
the Fleming a few years later, he must have been in high
spirits, for, in that case, he had bought the Fleming's neutrality,
or, should need be, the Fleming's active co-operation upon
his next invasion of Normandy ; and the Fleming was now
his vassal, that vassal's feudnrn, fief, or fee being not land, but
money, money drained from the broad lands of Canterbury.
And Robert of Meulan — for the King was accompanied by
that cunning statesman — must also have been in high spirits ;
inasmuch as he was by this time aware that the poor monks
who once insulted and outwitted him, and the Duke who
once swore so many oaths at him, had at last been forced to
sign away their interest in their much-prized abbot.

No doubt it was into the room of state in Gundulf's
great square tower that the Archbishop elect was ushered.
How worthy of a king was that vast hall ! What a height
from floor to roof; how stately those columns ; how cunning,
how adroit, how bold the ornament of each sculptured arch ;
how cool the air ; how luxuriously soft the light ! Gundulf
had so far allowed his genius to revel in its construction as to
exceed the first estimate, to his own loss, by an added fifty
shillings on every hundred ; and quick brains and cunning
hands from Lombardy had been engaged to realise his every
inspiration. It was Anselm himself who had contracted with
the Italians and sent them over to England. And here now
stood Anselm. Here too stood the King.

Drawing the prince aside, so as not to be overheard, the
monk addressed him as follows : —

B B 2

372 ANSELM'S PRECAUTIONARY STATEMENT.

* Sire, I am still of two minds whether or not to accept
the primacy. Still, if I should see my way in reason towards
doing so, there are one or two things I should wish you to do.
Let me briefly state them to you.

* I desire that you restore free of suit or controversy all
the lands which the Church of Canterbury, to the rule of
which I have been elected, held in the time of Archbishop
Lanfranc of blessed memory, and that you promise me right
and judgment anent the other lands which that Church held
before Lanfranc's primacy, but which, subsequently lost to
her, are not yet recovered.

' Further, I desire that in things which appertain to God
and our holy religion you trust yourself first and chiefly to
my advice ; and that, as I wish to have you for my earthly
lord and defender, so you take me for your father in spiritual
things and your soul's guide.

' Then as to Urban, the Roman Pontifl", whom you have
not as yet acknowledged as Pope, whereas I both have
acknowledged and do acknowledge him, and intend to show
him all due obedience and subjection, I give you this hint in
order to prevent scandal in the future. I beg you frankly to
tell me your own mind on these subjects, that knowing it I
may be the better able to shape my course.'

Whereupon the King called for the Bishop of Durham and
the Count of Meulan, and requested Anselm to repeat in
their hearing what he had just said. He did so, and received
through them the following reply : * I will restore you all the
lands of which the Church of Canterbury was seised in
Lanfranc's time precisely as they were then, but as to the
rest I make no agreement just at present. However, in these
and other things, I shall obey the dictates of duty, and
confide in you accordingly.'

With these words the interview ended.

The King left Rochester and resumed his journey. On
reaching Westminster he found that the long-desired letters

THE BISHOP OF DURHAM. 373

from the Duke of Normandy, the Archbishop of Rouen, and
the monks of Le Bee had arrived, and was soon on horse-
back again riding to Windsor.

The Bishop of Durham, meanwhile, was on another high-
road, travelling in all haste to his palatine see, where he and
the King of Scotland were to place the first stones of an
architectural pile of unique and imperishable splendour.
Alas that to so magnificent a creation should be associated
so unworthy a name ! A monk, in the first instance, at
Saint-Calais, and subsequently Abbot of St. Vincent's at Le
Mans, he was appointed to the see and palatinate of Durham
in the year 1080; but, having joined the standard of the
Bishop of Bayeux in 1088, followed that prelate into Nor-
mandy after the capitulation at Rochester, and was not
restored to his honours until the September of 1091. Note
him as he rides along ; mark how he mutters to himself, and
divine the scarce whispered scheme that he is weaving in a
dark and sullen heart. Should he try to give it vocal form
the right words would fail him, for not yet has he had time
to think out his thought. Let him ride on, then ; but mark
him well.

I suspect that the King, upon reaching Windsor, found
Renouf waiting to hear the news, and somewhat disconcerted
that unjust justicer by his account of the Rochester interview.
It certainly is worthy of remark that the only one of the
three questions to which he had given an undiplomatic reply
on that occasion was, notwithstanding his rapacity, the very
question upon which the Firebrand was not at hand to advise
him ; as though there were something in Anselm's presence,
something in Anselm's manner, that he could not rebel
against or bear up against when left to himself

But the imprudence must be rectified. Sending, there-
fore, to inform his illustrious victim that the necessary docu-
ments had come from Normandy, he implored him no longer
to slight the unanimous wish of the kingdom evinced in his

374 A SIMONIACAL SUGGESTION.

election to the primacy, and at the same time begged that
he would be so good — he asked it simply as a favour and a
token of friendship — as to excuse him from giving up some
Church lands which after Lanfranc's death he had granted to
vassals of his own, to be held by them as hereditary tenures.
The two portions of the message were very prettily juxta-
posed, with the coy hint peeping daintily out between. That
hint was not to be mistaken. Bribes, plain vulgar bribes,
were the order of the day ; everything for the last four years
had been subject of traffic, and what the King now wanted
was something to compensate the loss incurred by his
gratuitous disposal of the primacy on that awful day at
Gloucester. He had done his utmost to force the arch-
bishopric on Anselm ; but now that Anselm had accepted or
shown signs of accepting it, Anselm's opportunity had come
for offering a kind of recognition which was by this time
customary ; and surely Anselm, who was both scrupulous and
penniless, must appreciate the delicacy of a suggestion, com-
pliance with which could not cause him inconvenience and
need not give him scandal. But the simple Benedictine took
a different view of the matter ; he had no mind to rob his
successors in the see of Canterbury, and, in reply, begged to
be excused.

Now, then, he breathed again ; now, then, he was at liberty;
now, then, after five months of anguish, he had in quite an
unexpected way escaped the terrible preferment, and the
primacy of Britain would be sold to some one that could be
found to pay for it ; now, then — for he had by this time sent
his crosier back to Le Bee — he could slip away unseen to some
tranquil retreat, and pass the residue of his days in the estate
of a mere monk ; not ministered to, but ministering. So he
dreamed.

Alas, poor dreamer !

The King, much nettled by the refusal of the Archbishop
elect to surrender the coveted estates, entrusted the execution

INTERVENTION BY THE BARONS. 375

of his orders to the zeal and fidelity of the Firebrand, and
moved his court to Gloucester, whither on the 24th of the
month the King of Scotland, in accordance with an agree-
ment .made to that effect, came to take his share in a treaty
of peace and alliance between the two realms. But the
disdainful monarch refused to speak with him, refused to see
his face, sent messages requiring that of him which could
never in honour have been conceded, and then bade him
begone. The Scot retraced his ineffectual steps, and, brow-
beaten and befooled, made for his native land.

Anselm, not informed of the King's humour, was still
dreaming the fair dream so congenial to his temperament,
when news came of the real state of things. He was not
to escape so easily. Renouf was at work again ; and when
that is said the reader knows all. Already on some of the
Canterbury estates rents had been racked from five to forty
shillings, and they would soon be up to fifty. The King must
have Anselm for archbishop, but the King must also have
money for the archbishopric, and this was the King's way of
getting it.

What, then, was Anselm to do ) See all the old miseries
afresh enacted and prolonged till Kent was a wilderness,
or curtail a property that was not yet his own to the perpetual
detriment of his successors }

In this emergency it was that the barons of England for
the first time interposed — for the first time, not the last.

It may be that they were alarmed for the integrity of their
own estates in no distant future ; unquestionably they were
stung to indignation by conduct which there was no word
in their vocabulary to describe. Nor they alone ; the whole
nation was exasperated. And so the King, not yet given up
to a judicial blindness, yielded, or affected to yield, to the
general clamour.

By this time he was at Winchester. To Winchester,
therefore, was Anselm summoned. Unfortunately for pos-

376 ANSELM'S FINAL CONSENT.

terity, Eadmer was not there to record what was said by
princes by prelate or by baron, or by the careworn and
emaciated monk that stood there among them. Let it, then,
suffice us to know that the King of the English in the
presence of his peers not only relinquished, or pretended to
relinquish, his claim to the recently disputed estates, but
made such protestations of the good things he was going to
do for the Church as at length elicited the final consent of a
man who, whatever might be his own preferences, his own
love for seclusion, or his own dread of publicity, of pomp, and
of honour, had that in him which gave him courage, when
once he clearly saw the Finger of God pointing the way, to
go where that Finger pointed, even though in going he should
have to walk through furnaces of fire.

Following, therefore, the precedent established by Lanfranc,
a precedent doubtless approved by the legates who, being
in England on the occasion, must have been cognisant of
Lanfranc's act, he became the homo of the King ; not indeed
for the archiepiscopal dignity, as though it were derived from
the Crown ; nor for the archiepiscopal estates, as though they
were resumable by the Crown ; but for the enjoyment of
those estates, inasmuch as the King, although not their domi-
mis, was charged with their advocatio. ' More et exemplo
prsedecessoris sui pro usu terrae homo regis factus est.*

377

CHAPTER II.

FEALTY AND HOMAGE: ENTHRONEMENT OF THE
ARCHBISHOP ELECT.

As performed between subject and subject, the homager
being a layman, in our own country and in the fifteenth
century, the ceremony of homage is thus described by
Littleton : — * When the tenant shall make homage to his lord
he shall be ungirt, and his head uncovered, and his lord shall
sit, and the tenant shall kneel before him on both his knees,
and hold his hands jointly together between the hands of his
lord, and shall say thus : " I become your man {je deveigne
vostre home) from this day forward, and unto you shall be
true and faithful, and bear to you faith for the tenements that
I claim to hold of you, saving the faith that I owe unto our
sovereign lord the King, and shall lawfully do to you the cus-
toms and services which I ought to do at the terms assigned.
So help me God." And he shall kiss the book.'

If, however, the oath of fealty was taken, but no homage
made, the vassal stood before his lord, and holding his hand
upon the book said, * Know ye this, my lord, that I shall be
faithful and true to you, and faith to you shall bear for the
lands which I claim to hold of you, and that I shall lawfully
do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at
the terms assigned. So help me God.'

If the contracting parties were the sovereign and a sub-
ject the words *of life and limb and of earthly worship'
were inserted immediately after * from this day forward,'
and the saving clause after the words ' hold of you ' omitted.

Keeping still to Littleton, I have to add two remarks.

S7S HOMAGE BY MEN OF RELIGION,

The first is that when a woman did homage she did not
say, *I become your woman,' for *it is not fitting that a
woman should say that she will become a woman to any man
but to her husband, when she is married. But she shall say,
" I do to you homage, and to you shall be faithful and true,
and faith to you shall bear for the tenements I hold of
you, saving the faith I owe to our sovereign lord the King."

The second is, that when a man of religion did homage to
his lord he did not say, ' I become your man,' &c., ' for that '
— again I quote Littleton — ' he hath professed himself to be
only the man of God. But he shall say thus : " I do homage
unto you, and to you shall be true and faithful, and faith to
you bear for the tenements which I hold of you, saving
the faith which I do owe to our lord the King." ' Comment-
ing on which passage. Coke observes, ' In the old books and
records the homage which a bishop, abbot, or other man
of religion doth is called fealty, for that it wanteth these
words : " I become your man." But yet in judgment of law it
is homage, because he saith, " I do to you homage," ' &c.

This distinction between laymen who became the King's
men and clergymen who did homage seems to have sub-
sisted early in the reign of Henry I. ; for that sovereign,
desiring to secure the succession of his son, convened the
bishops, abbots, and principes of the kingdom for that purpose
on the sixteenth of March, 1116, when, whilst the principes
became the men of the young prince— facti stint honwies
ipsius Willielmi — the Archbishop of Canterbury, the rest of
the bishops, and the abbots promised that, should they
survive the King, they would transfer the crown to his son,
and not become his men, but do him their homages — eique
hominia factnros. But more of this in another place. All
that I here wish to indicate is that as far back as the year
1 1 16 it seems to have been the usage that Churchmen should
not make themselves the men, still less the liegemen, of the
King.

LIEGE HOMAGE. 379

There is no need to inform the reader that homage was of
two kinds, simple and liege ; but it may be well to remark
that the character of the homage paid in any case does not
seem to have been determined by the formula employed in
making it. For (i) when in 1403 the Duke of Brittany
made his homage to the King of France, the chancellor
of that kingdom spake as follows : ' And now, my lord Duke
of Brittany, as to the homage which you have done to our
lord the King here present, he understands that the said
homage is liege, because all the homages which his vassals
make and give him, and especially the peers of France, one
of whom you are, are liege homages ; ' and (2) Ducange
quotes from the * Registrum Feudorum Campanile ' the case
of a vassal who did not know whether the homage he had
paid were simple homage or liege.

The scope and stringency, however, of liege, as dis-
tinguished from simple, homage, as far back as the beginning
of the thirteenth century, may be gathered from the follow-
ing declaration made in the year 121 1 by Fernand, Count of
Flanders, at the instance of his liege lord the King of
France : —

' I F'ernand, Count of Flanders and Hainault, notify to all
that I am the liegeman of my illustrious lord Philip, King of
France, against all mortal men and women ( * contra omnes
homines et foeminas qui possunt vivere et mori ' ), and that
I have sworn to him that I will do him good service and
faithful ; neither will I fail him so long as he will do me right
of his court. But should I fail of good and faithful service
to him, I give leave to all my vassals, be they barons or be
they knights, and to all communes, townships, and boroughs
of my land, to be against me, and that to the utmost of their
power they be for a help to the said my lord the King and
for an injury to me. And I will and require that all the
aforesaid, as well barons as knights, and the rest, swear and
give this security to my lord the King. But should anyone

38o '[FIDELES ET LIGIIJ

refuse thus to swear, I would do him all the harm in my
power ; neither would I make peace or truce with him, save by
the will and good pleasure of my lord the King, &c. . . .
Done at Paris in the year of our Lord m.cc.xi., in the month of
January, and on St. Vincent's Day.'

This document shows that the Count, whatever the formula
employed, had done two distinct things — made himself the
King's liegeman and taken an oath of fealty to him ; and it
shows that lord and vassal had each of them his duties. But
it also shows into what a frightful engine liege service might
be converted ; for the judgment whether the vassal had kept
or broken his engagement, was left, not to a just God who
judges justly, but to a prince who might at any moment put
almost any meaning he chose upon the words 'good and
faithful service.'

I said just now that the Count of Flanders had done two
distinct things — become the King's liegeman and taken an
oath of fealty. But it would be more correct to say that on
occasion of taking the oath of fealty he had become the King's
liegeman. This is an important distinction, for it recognises
the fact that the relation established by fealty is older than
that established by homage. But more of this presently.

Turning, however, to our own country, not indeed as it
was in the fifteenth century, but as it was from the end of the
reign of Edward IV. back to, at any rate, the beginning of
that of Edward I., we find that during that period, if not
from a still earlier age, the writs of summons to Parliament
exhibited a noteworthy distinction between the magnates and
the prcelati of the realm ; for, whereas temporal lords were
required to appear in fide et ligeantia^ the bishops were called
in fide et dilectione. The former class, that is to say, were
trusty and liege, the latter trusty and well beloved ; the former
vjQXtfideles et ligii, the \2iiieY fideles et dilectores.

I am not aware that any attempt has been made to
ascertain when it was that this usage was established of

'FIDELES ET DILECTORES: 381

styling a clergyman the king's fidelis et dilector in contra-
distinction to the layman, who was his fidelis et ligius.
Neither do I believe that any attempt has been made to
ascertain when it was that he was said to make homage to
the king [hominium regi fecit) in contradistinction to the
layman who became the king's man {homo regis facttis est).
But whatever I may have to say on these two very interesting
subjects must be deferred to a later page, for our present
concern is with homage as distinguished from fealty.

Time was when the vassal or tenant was called the king's
fidelis, the term homo being not as yet in use ; as at a later
period, the term homo ligius not being as yet in use, the vassal
or tenant of the king was simply called his homo.

Now it is the legal relation of a vassal or fidelis to his lord
which is set forth by the -word fidelitas, fea?tte, fealty — his legal
relation, I say, not his moral duty. And upon becoming the
lord's fidelis he made, in virtue of that relation, a promise
corresponding to it ; the which promise, although it acknow-
ledged and enunciated the duty of faith, or fides, received its
name and description, not from that duty, but from the
relation which had occasioned it ; and was called, not a
promise of faith or fides, but a promise appertaining to fealty
or fidelitas. And when the promise was made under oath
the formula employed was called not sacramentum fidei, or
oath to bear faith, but sacramentum fide litatis, that is to say,
the oath taken by a man on becoming his lord's fidelis, or the
oath proper to the vassal's relation of fealty to his lord.

But whereas the legal relation of fidelis to domimts was
established by the promise — or the promise under oath — of
fealty, that of homo to domimis was established not by a
verbal promise, but by a symbolical act. To make himself
the king's homo, the tenant or vassal — I am speaking of
laymen — placed his hands within the king's hands. In
Littleton's day he knelt, but it does not therefore follow that
he had always knelt, or that, if he had always knelt, the

382 'FIDELES' AND 'HOMINES:

kneeling was essential to the homage. In Littleton's days he
said, * I become your man ; ' but it does not therefore follow
that he had always employed that or any other verbal for-
mula ; and I think that we shall be safe in assuming that
when homages were first made they were made by the one
and only ceremony of joining of hands. They may have
been made kneeling, but, if so, the kneeling was a congruous
accident, nothing more. They may have been accompanied
with a form of words, but, if so, that form was a congruous
adjunct, nothing more. This, I say, would seem to be the
most probable account.

In other words, when a man became the fidelis of a king
he established himself in that relation by pronouncing a form
of words, whether with or without oath, which bound him
to discharge the duties appertaining to it. But if the king,
for whatever reason, desired to draw close and tighten that
relation, ^^ fidelis would, whilst he spoke the words, hold his
hands within the king's, and the closeness and stringency of
relation thus established was denoted by the phrase homo.
He was the king's fidelis, it is true ; but he was more than
that, he was the king's homo.

Thus I am the king's fidelis, as I have been for many
years, but when I this morning repeated my oath of fealty to
him I held my hands within his, and by so doing became one
of his homines. Yesterday I was his fidelis, but to-day I am
more ; I am his ho7no.

And now it is time to enquire in what the ceremony
consisted by which Anselm, Archbishop elect of Canterbury,
notified that his fealty to the King of the English was that
not of a mere fidelis, but of a homo. That he knelt to show
himself the King's man is inconceivable. For (i) the age
would not have tolerated such an impropriety ; (2) even
seventy years later, when Adrian IV. wrote a letter of
reprimand to Frederick Barbarossa, he accused him of no
such indecency as that of making bishops go down upon their

ANSELM'S ACT OF HOMAGE. 383

knees before him ; and (3) neither in the Council of Clermont,
held soon after the date of Anselm's homage, nor in that of
the Vatican, at which Anselm was present to say all that he
knew on the subject, was any other usage censured than that
of making bishops and priests place their hands within those
of laymen.

Standing, then, before the King, the Archbishop elect
placed his hands between the King's hands, and made declara-
tion of fealty ; and that such intromissio mammm, without an
accompanying form of words proper to it, was all that was
needed for the doing of homage may be inferred from two
passages in the letters of Bishop Yves of Chartres, himself a
distinguished lawyer, in one of which he speaks of persons who
had become his vassals per inammi et sacramentum^ i.e. by
act of homage and profession of fealty, and in the other of
archbishops who had done fealty et per mamim et per
sacr amentum ; whilst a diploma of Louis le Gros speaks of
the obligation contracted by homage as one contracted /£?r
manum, and says nothing of a corresponding declaration.

To hold his hands, then, within the King's hands whilst
pronouncing the formula of fealty was sufficient to make
Anselm the ho7no of the King.

We must now enquire what, precisely, that formula may
have been.

There are two letters extant from Archbishop Lanfranc to
the Conqueror. One of them begins thus : * Domino suo
Anglorum regi Willelmo fidelis suus Lanfrancus, fidele
servitium et fideles orationes.'

The other : * Gloriosissimo domino suo Anglorum regi
Willelmo fidelis suus Lanfrancus, fidele servitium cum
orationibus.'

There is a formality in these addresses to the doininns
from his fidelis which lends importance and interest to the
words fidele servitium and orationes, for a presumption is
raised by them that when Lanfranc * made his fealty ' to the

384 ANSELM*S PROFESSION OF FEALTY.

King he bound himself to (i) faithful service to him and to

(2) prayers for him.

And if we examine Anselm's letters we find the pre-
sumption justified. Of fifteen letters sent by him to King
Henry I. there is absolutely not one the superscription of
which does not contain * fidele servitium/ and either * orationes '
or * fideles orationes,' and in a message of his to the King sent
through Bishop Gundulf/ he commends himself to him with
his ' fidele servitium ' ; * fidele servitium domino et regi.' Nor
is this all ; in the body of his letters to the King he never
fails to style himself the YAxi^?>fidelis.

We may then, I think, conclude that Lanfranc and
Anselm, on becoming, each in his turn, the Jiomo of the
reigning prince, engaged, each in his turn, to give the King
fidele servitium et orationes. But more than this. The latter
prelate in one of his letters to Henry I. calls himself
* fidelissimus animse vestrse et corporis vestri et veri honoris
vestri ; ' and that these words are a quotation from his promise
of fealty to the Crown is rendered probable by the peculiar
Latinity, and also by these two facts : (i) that Bishop Fulbert
of Chartres, writing some ninety years previously to Richard
the Good of Normandy, said ' nos .... animae vestrie
corporique vestro .... fideles sumus ; ' and (2) that the
same prelate, who was a great lawyer, says to the Duke of
Aquitaine, ' agnosco me perpetuum debitorem esse animae tuae
et corpori tuo.'

Thirdly, there can be no doubt that the words 'fidele
consilium et auxilium ' formed part of the formula ; but they
will occur so frequently in the course of the following pages
that I need say no more about them at present.

In St. Anselm's case, then, the profession of fealty con-
tained the phrases (i) * fidele servitium,' (2) ' fideles orationes,'

(3) 'fidelis animae vestrae et corporis vestri et veri honoris
vestri,' (4) ' fidele consilium et auxilium,' and perhaps, as we

' Ep. iv. 35.

TENDENCY OF CLERICAL HOMAGE. 385

shall see later on, (5) ' fides et honor.' That the formula will
ever be recovered is more than I dare to hope,

So much, then — alas that it should be so little !— on
Anselm's profession of fealty, a profession made concurrently
with the act which constituted him the King's man.

I shall not unduly anticipate what must be recorded in the
sequel of this history if I pause to notice an obvious objection.

Why, it may be asked, should Anselm, who in 1093 put
his hands within the Red King's, so obstinately refuse seven
years later to do the selfsame thing to Henry I. ? For two
reasons, (i) The Holy See had in the interval forbidden
such ceremonial act from bishops to kings ; and (2) he knew
too well the high value set on precedent by the princes of the
Norman dynasty not to feel convinced that if the Christian
interests of England were not to be placed, all of them, under
the heel of the sovereign, the precedent of episcopal homage
rendered to the prince must be broken, and broken without
delay. The royal investiture of bishops meant, or might any
day be made to mean, that bishops received their proper
spiritual jurisdiction from the Crown. And, knowing this,
Anselm would have been blind not to see that, the corporal
ceremony of homage having now been superadded to the
verbal profession of fealty, that ceremony might at any
moment be made to mean that bishops were not only the
men but the bondsmen, not only the servants but the slaves
of kings, and in such wise the bondsmen and slaves as that
even an Archbishop of Canterbury should be required to
invoke the hatred and enmity of all mankind were he ever to
swerve from it ; for that was, as we have seen in the instance
of the Count of Flanders, the manifest tendency of the insti-
tution known as homage.

The whole drift and current of the usage of investiture

tended to encourage the heresy that princes were the

depositories whence bishops were to derive their spiritual

jurisdiction ; and Anselm saw as clearly as his neighbours

VOL. I. C C

386 ANSELM STYLED THE KING'S LIEGEMAN.

that the whole drift and current of the concomitant usage
known as homage tended to convert princes who were, and
rightfully enough, the domini terreni of bishops from domini
terreni into domini ligiiy and thus not only to change bishops,
by means of the transitional estate of homines, ixomfideles into
ligii homines, but to convert them from temporal subjects into
spiritual subalterns.

To all this a very plausible rejoinder may be made ; that
what Henry required of Anselm in iioo was, after all, only
that which Anselm had given to the Red King seven years
before, the title of terrenus dominus as distinguished from
that of ligiiLS dominus, and that, until evidence to the con-
trary be produced, we must believe the Primate to have been
afraid of the fire before he had burnt his fingers, and to have
cried out before he had been hurt.

This very plausible rejoinder would claim a reply were it
only guaranteed by facts. But, alas ! the guarantee of facts is
all on the other side. It was because he had burnt his fingers
that he was afraid of the fire, and because he had been hurt
that he cried out. On the very morrow of his homage to
William Rufus, that worst of men, resolved that his poor
victim, who thought himself a servant, should find himself
a slave and have the axe before his eyes from the moment
in which he owned the jurisdiction of, not this or that pope,
but the jurisdiction never yet called in question of the See
of Peterj caused a document to be engrossed which fixed
on him the brand of personal servitude direct and absolute.
* Hoc donum factum est die crastina qua Anselmus Archie-
piscopus mens ligeus homo factus est.' ^

Had the Firebrand a part in this.? Not improbably.
He was one of the witnesses to the deed. Be that as it

' ' Impeximus (Henricus VI.) etiam quandam aliam cartam ipsius progeni-
toris nostri in hsec verba : Willelmus rex Anglise .... Sciatis me dedisse ....
Hoc donum factum est die crastina qua Anselmus Archiepiscopus meus ligeus homo
factus est.' — See Dugdale, vi. 1271.

THE ENTHRONEMENT. 387

may, what was written was written, and the King had known
his own purpose in causing it to be written. The basest and
cruellest of tricks had been played, and the King had known
his own purpose in playing it.

And now that we are again on the course of our journey
we will push on at once for one short stage more.

As morning broke on Canterbury on Sunday the twenty-
fifth of September, hope revived in the hearts of its in-
habitants. The city was soon astir, for the new Archbishop
was coming. He was met by a long procession of monks
and clerks, who, with songs of joy scarcely audible above
the acclamations of the delighted populace, led him to the
venerable primatial church of All Britain. Nothing was
spared to lend dignity and pomp to so auspicious an occa-
sion ; and when the Bishop of London conducted the thin,
white-headed, but singularly handsome man to the foot of the
throne, which for four years and a half had stood empty, and
then, bidding him mount the sacred stairs, set him, dizzy and
bewildered, in the augustest chair save one in Christendom,
then, then from a thousand throats there sprang such jubilee
of thanksgiving as smote the gorgeously tinted roofs of oak
till they trembled and shook.

Was all this joy too full, or what.? Scarcely had the
spent echoes of the Te Deiiin subsided and expired when,
insensible to every sentiment of delicacy, of pity, and of
shame, Renouf the Firebrand marched blustering into the
sacred place. The King had sent him ; he was come to
serve a writ on the new Archbishop. Men's blood boiled at
the indignity. 'What,' they cried, 'might he not pass his
first day in peace .? ' And, after all, as if the tyrant and his
miscreant clerk had studied to aggravate indignity by inso-
lence, the case was one of which the royal courts had by law
no cognisance, for it lay within the jurisdiction of the
spiritual tribunals. But Anselm was powerless against the
King, and, auguring the future from the present, scanned and

c c 2

388 SEQUEL OF THE ENTHRONEMENT.

foretold the griefs he was to endure. On the threshold of
a new life of service, set him to do by God, he stood, as
Solomon says, in fear, and prepared his soul for temptation,
' knowing that all that will live godly in Christ must suffer
persecution.'

APPENDIX

APPENDIX TO VOL. I.

ANECDOTON A (pp. 28-33).

It has been my happiness to light upon the following very valuable
fragment in Cod. 499 of the Queen of Sweden's Collection in the
Vatican Library. There can be no question as to its genuineness : —
'Vir Dei venerabilis Anselmus cum adhuc esset puerulus, ut
ipse postmodum referre solitus erat, htteris imbui valde desiderabat,
parentesque suos ut ad scolam mitteretur assidu^ exorabat. Unde
divina providentia disponente ad hoc pervenit quod tanto mentis
amore rogabat. Denique traditus est cuidam consanguineo suo ut
eum attentiiTS doceret, qui eum in domo sua reclusit ubi studiosius
doceretur, et ne evagando foras licentia k studio discendi praepedire-
tur. Ubi dum diutius clausus haberetur paene in amentiam versus
est. Post aliquantum verb temporis reducitur matrique redditur.
Puer inexpertam sibi clientium videns frequentiam expavit et
omnium consortia fugiebat ac etiam aspectum declinabat atque in-
terrogatus responsum non dabat. Videns hsec mater cum lacrimis
exclamavit, Heu me miseram, filium meum amisi. Pertractans
autem et recogitans apud semetipsam quid facto opus esset salubre
reperit consilium. Praecepit itaque omnibus domus suae famulis et
ancillis ut eum permitterent facere quicquid vellet nullusque ei
obsisteret, immo si cui aliquid imperaret facere non differret, sicque
ad priorem Deo volente rediit sospitatem. Cum autem ad virilem
pervenisset statum et religionis habitum suscepisset tanta discretione
erga omnes studuit se habere et quos regendos susceperat maxime
juvenes tanta lenitate in morum honestate informare sicut in se
olim didicerat huic setati convenire. Cui Dei gratia ita semper
aflfuit ut nullus nostra aetate fuerit qui tam in hujusmodi dispensa-
tione profecerit. Nam vita ejus et conversatio disciplina morum
aliis extitit, sicut in libro vitse ejus plenitis invenitur.'

392 APPENDIX,

ANECDOTON B (pp. 89, 90).

The following account of Lanfranc's introduction to Herlwin is
taken from an unpublished codex (96 Lat.) in the public library at
Evreux. Internal evidence shows it to be the work of a monk 01
Le Bee who wrote early in the twelfth century.

The account of Lanfranc's adventure in the forest presents no
material difference from that given in the ' Chronicon Beccense,' but
what follows is very interesting ; —

* . . . . Cui perquirenti ubi haberetur villus terrse illius cenobium
dictum est non longb abesse cenobiolum quoddam pauperrimum e't
despicabile, quod a quodam monacho nuper converso de seculo
quoquomodo edificabatur qui dicebatur Herluinus. Quod ille
audiens praepeti celeritate illuc advolat. Evenit autem divina
prudentia, ut cum illuc veniret abbas persemet faceret furnum ad
panes coquendos. Interrogat ille ubi esset abbas loci illius. Osten-
sus est illi ubi operabatur. Et cum ad eum accederet forte abbas
intraverat furnum. Qui accedens ad ostium furni, nondum enim
desuper erat constructum, interrogat quis diceretur abbas loci illius.
Ille statim respondit. . Ego, sed hoc cur perquiris ? At ille. Quia
volo hic monachus fieri, si Dei et vostra voluntas permiserit. Et
abbas. Es clericus an laicus ? Et ille. Clericus scolaris sum,
genere Italicus, et vocor Lanfrancus. Tunc abbas, cui forte jam
Deus aliquid de eo innotuerat, vel ad quem jam fama viri venerat,
inclinans se ad os clibani, dixit ei. Ego in nomine Domini te suscipio.
Ad hoc et ipse Lanfrancus inclinans se ad os clibani osculari voluit
pedes ejus. Quod ille non permisit, nisi solum manus. Statimque
projiciens Lanfrancus indumentum quo amictus erat, cepit et ipse
operari cum ceteris operariis et cum ipso abbate. Completo ad
horam opere rediit abbas ad fratres ; eisque innotuit voluntatem et
desiderium clerici et ita communi consensu omnium regulariter
recepit eum, tradens ei regulam ad legendum. Qua perlecta professus
est se sub eadem libenter victurum. Et non post multos dies
stabilitatem suam ibi firmavit monachica profession e.'

The account usually attributed, whether rightly or wrongly, to
Milo Crispin makes Lanfranc a postulant at the beginning of the
interview and a novice at the end of it, a circumstance which, in my
humble opinion, throws a very grave suspicion on it. It may be
divided into five parts, thus : —

I. 'What do you want?' ('Quid vis?') * To become a monk'
(' Monachus fieri volo ').

LANFRANC'S NOVITIATE, 393

2. The mle is shown to the postulant.

3. He reads it and promises to obey it.

4. The abbot grants the petition — concessit ei quod petebat.

5. Lanfranc kisses his feet.

The order observed on the reception of a novice was this : —

1. He was asked what he wanted, and replied that he wished to
become a monk ('interrogatus quid dicat in his vel in similibus
verbis petitionem suam facit ....'" Monachum fieri desidero " ').

2. An account was given him of what monks have to do and
endure.

3. He promised to bear all.

4. The abbot said, ' Nos .... concedimus .... quod re-
quiritis.'

5. The novice kissed the abbot's feet.

Herlwin was an old soldier and the model of monks, and I shall
never believe that he could do so irregular a thing as admit a
postulant to the novitiate after the very irregular fashion with which
he has been credited by Lanfranc's biographer ; for few things could
be conceived more out of harmony with the monastic spirit.

But, on the other hand, if the account given in the codex be
true — and it is not, like Milo's, antecedently incredible — then Milo's
mistake is easily accounted for. Herlwin said * Ego suscipio te ' in
the sense of * Come as a postulant ; ' for when Lanfranc fell at his
feet he would not allow him to kiss them, as though he were
already his spiritual subject. Milo, or those from whom he had his
account, put a wrong meaning on these words ; believed Lanfranc to
have become a novice in the bakehouse ; and, thus beHeving,
foisted in the detail — a detail correct enough in its proper place —
about the book of the rule , and made one complete but false story
out of two.

Both in Milo's account and in the other the showing of the
rule is made to take the place of the viva voce address customary on
the reception of a novice. This is quite intelligible, for Herlwin's
Latin was of a humble order. But the document was shown in the
chapter house, as the codex describes ; for it is not to be believed
that Lanfranc can have read it through in so short a space of time
as must have elapsed before prime, and it is scarcely conceivable
that Herlwin should have been so punctilious as to make his
postulant peruse that lengthy work and yet so forgetful of his own
duty as to violate its spirit and its plain injunctions.

394

APPENDIX.

ANECDOTON C (Book III. passim) .

The following list of monks professed at Le Bee from its founda-
tio n to the end of Anselm's abbatial career is taken from the codex
which supplied me with the first of these anecdota .
It has been of incalculable service to me : —

NOMINA MONACHORUM BECCI.

Dfts abbas Herlui-

Goscelinus.

Rodulfus.

nus.

(40)

Herluinus.

Am albertus.

Walterius.

Rainaldus.

{80) Riculfus.

Herveus.

Walterius.

Serlo.

Baldricus. '

Walterius.

Gillebertus.

Roscelinus.

Petrus.

Warnerius.

Goscelinus.

Teodericus.

Milo.

Gausbertus.

Raherius.

Gaufridus.

Hugo.

Ansfredus.

Teodericus.

Drogo.

Albertus.

Ansfredus.

(lo) Rogerius abbas.

Rodulfus.

Harwardus.

Adam.

(50) Tedulfus.

Ricer abbas.

Tedbaldus.

Turulfus.

(90) Goscelinus.

Ingerius.

Durandus.

Warinus.

Odo.

Ansgotus.

Odo.

Albertus.

Balduinus.

Henricus.

Ansgotus.

Fulbertus.

Walterius.

Odo.

Herunbertus. '

Osmundus.

Rodulfus.

Richarius.

Attardus.

Guilielmus abbas.

Farmannus.

Ruardus.

(20) Walterius.

Gislebertus abbas.

Osbernus.

Gotbertus.

(60) Benedictus.

Zulco.

Olricus.

Ricardus.

(100) Lanfrancus.

Fulconius.

Isuardus.

Guido.

Osbernus.

Ricardus.

Hervaldus.

Alveradus.

Robertus.

Giraldus,

Turstinus.

Guillermus.

Teduinus primus mo-

Normannus.

Osbernus.

nachus novse eccle-

Rodulfus.

Gundulfus episcopus

site.

Ascelinus.

Anselmus abbas et

[R] obertus.

(30) Fulcrannus.

archiepiscopus.

Alannus.

Albuinus.

Hernostus episcopus.

Rodulfus.

Anastasius.

(70) Rodulfus.

Willermus.

Drogo.

Frod ....

Godefridus.

Boso.

Ansfredus. \

(no) Odo.

Lanfrancus archiepis-

Mauricius.

Chetellus

copus.

Henricus abbas.

Widimundus.

Rainaldus.

Osulfus.

Hugo.

Bernardus.

Azo.

Drogo.

Arnulfus.

Bonizo.

Girardus.

'NOMINA MONACHORUM BECCi:

395

Bartholomeus.

Robertus.

Ursus.

Fulco episcopus,
(120) Haimo.

Walterius.

Gradulfus.

Restaldus.

Henricus.

Hermenfridus.

Warinus.

Franco.

Gislebertus.

Vitalis.
(130) Bernardus.

Guido.

Rogerius.

Anselmus.

Joh.

Ama.

Hugo.

Hugo.

Hucusque monachus
primus abbas.

Goso.
(140) Girelmus.

Adelelus.

Teodericus.

Rodulfus.

Guido.

Ricer abbas.

Walterius.

Baldricus.

Rogerius.

Osmundus.
(150) Hugo.

Achardus.

Gislebertus.

Willermus.

Robertus.

Martinus.

Teduinus.

Eustachius.

Rodulfus.

Guido.
(160) Vitalis.

Petrus.

Guilielmus, iij abbas.

Romanus.

Guarinus.

Salomon.

Adam.

Tezo.

Godefridus.

Walchelinus.
(170) Guimundus.

Robertus .

Geroldus.

Lanscelinus.

Robertus.

Dyonisius.

Gualo.

Johannes episcopus.

Andreas.

Rainaldus.
(180) Rainaldus.

Paulus .

Goscelinus.

Ascelinus.

Bernerius .

Petrus.

Odo.

Goscelinus.

Grumoldus.

Ivo.
(190) Willermus.

Lanfredus abbas.

Herveus.

Herveus.

Rodulfus.

Willermus.

Haimo.

Wibaldus.

Stephanus.

Gaufridus.
(200) Malgerius.

Willermus.

Gunduinus.

Gaufridus.

Fulco.

Albertus.

Ricardus.

Rogerius.

Robertus.

Hugo.
(210) Walterius.

Arche . . . boldus

Albericus.

Rodulfus.

Hugo

Ricardus.

Ivo.

Willermus.

Gaufridus.

Ebremerus.
{220) Hugo.

Warinus.

Bernardus.

Herbertus.

Girboldus.

Aselmus.

Stephanus.

Ricardus.

Rainaldus.

Baluinus.
(230) Hugo.

Vivianus.

Ivo.

Hermannus.

Bernardus.

Hugo.

Willermus.

Odo.

Thestedus.

Johannes.
(240) Tebaldus.

Hildoardus.

Rodulfus.

Valo.

Walterius.

Warinus.

Ricardus.

Walterius

Rodulfus.

Rodulfus.
(250) Ermenfridus.

Hildebaldus.

Ivo.

Oliverus.

Girardus.

Anschitillus.

Ursus.

Rodulfus.

Rodulfus.

Tedboldus.
(260) Gislebertus.

Boso iiij abbas.

Rainaldus.

Walterius.

396

APPENDIX,

Hunfredus.

Ricardus.

Ilbodus.

Gislebertus.

Ricardus.

Hugo.

Walterius.

Anschitilus.

(290]

\ Rainaldus.

Baldricus.

Odo.

Christianus.

Hugo.

(280) Gislebertus.

Willermus.

Rodulphus.

Willermus.

Warinus.

(270) Walterius.

Rainaldus.

Fulcherius.

Ricardus.

Walterius.

Vigerius.

Rodulphus.

Rodulfus.

Rainaldus.

Robertus.

Walterius.

(297]

1 Seifridus.

Gaufridus.

Restaldus.

Hucusque monachus

Walterius.

Hugo.

ij abbas.

ANECDOTON D (p. 208).

THE ANNIVERSARY OF BLESSED HERLWIN.

It would be foreign to my purpose to expatiate on the havoc
wrought on the suppression of the monastery of Le Bee — a long and
painful story. Amongst the little that escaped destruction there have
been preserved, perhaps as unworthy of the destroyer, three copies
of a little sacristan's manual — a sort of kalendar of anniversary masses,
and the like, proper to the community. They are preserved in the
public library at Evreux. Conspicuous amongst the other directions
contained in this ' Regula Becci ' is the following, which I believe has
never been published : —

* Septimo EIal. Sep.

*Vigesima sexta ejusdam mensis celebratur obitus venerabilis
Helluyni primi abbatis ac fundatoris egregii nostri hujus cenobii
becensis. Habet missam matutinalem ad majus altare chori cum
coUectis Deus indulgenitarnm, Si?igulariter, Miserere et Fideliu7n,
Tabula duplex in qua procurat omnia cantor ut in prsecipuis festis.
Omnes in choro assistentes albis paratis revestiantur. Responsorium
a tribus. Tractus ad quattuor dicitur. Quotquot sunt luminaria
dum servitium agitur ardeant ut in solemnibus festis. Tabula chori
aperitur. Altaria et tumulus non luctus sunt sed triumphi. Tapetum
sericum cum aureis feliis contextum super sepulcrum sternitur. A
vigiliis quae pridie hujus diei solemnes dicuntur usque ad missam
peractam ad sepulcri latera quod in capitulo est duo cerei jugiter
ardent. Haec dies solemnis est atque inter festa quatuor ad Venite
commemorata in conventu. Mensa duplex est. Cantor legit de
vita ejusdem. Diebus praecedentibus fit rasura. Quae lectiones et
responsoria advigilias dicuntur in tabula cantoris rubro scribuntur.

BLESSED HERLWIN'S TOMB. 397

Duo habentur thiiribula argentea. Non dicitur Libera. Quisquis
sacerdos pro eo celebrat sub officio et oratione prsecedenti. Ttrtiam
psalterii partem dicunt novitii, monachi laici septem psalmos peniten-
tiales vel centum Paternoster et Ave Maria.'

ANECDOTON E (p. 210).

THE TOMB OF BLESSED HERLWIN.

Not less interesting than the preceding extract is a singularly
pathetic document preserved at the mairie of Le Bee Hellouin, a
copy of which I have with some difficulty obtained. It is as
follows : —

* Exhumation du corps du bienheureux helloin.

' L'an mil sept cent quatre-vingt-douze, quatrieme de la liberte,
premier de la Rdpublique Frangaise, le dimanche, quatorze octobre, a
deux heures apres midi, on a celebre dans cette paroisse la translation
du corps du bienheureux Helloin, premier fondateur et premier
abbe de la ci-devant abbaye du Bee. On a transporte le meme
jour de I'abbaye dans I'eglise paroissiale une croix richement ornee
d'un grand n ombre de reliques ; comme deux autres reliquaires de
forme de pyramides couverts d'une feuille simple d'argent, et deux
autres reliquaires de bois d'ebene couverts de cuivre d'or.

' Le bienheureux Helloin naquit en Normandie Tan de Notre
Seigneur neuf cent quatre-vingt-douze ; son pere se nommait Angot,
seigneur normand, et sa mbre H^oise, descendante des comtes de
Flandres.

* En I'ann^e mille trente-quatre, apres avoir vecu et servi sa patrie
environ pendant quarante ans k la cour de Gilbert, comte de Brionne,
il fonda le monastere du Bee, et il y mourut en odeur de saintete le
vingt-six aolit mille soixante-dixhuit, et fut inhume avec pompe et
religieuse ceremonie dans le chapitre du monastere, dans un
tombeau de pierre brutte d'une pesanteur conside'rable, avec sa
croche en bois, ses brodequins et ses ornements sacerdoteaux. En
mille sept cent sept, six cent trente et un ans apres sa mort, on ouvrit
son tombeau, comme il appert par son proces-verbal du cinquieme
jour de juillet, mille sept cent sept, ci -joint, qui constate qu'on a
trouve a cette epoque son squelette tout entier sans la moindre
marque de corruption ni derangement d'aucun os, sa crosse intacte k
sa gauche et ses brodequins seulement decousus ; lequel procbs-
verbal nous a ete remis es mains par le ci-devant prieur. Dans le

398 APPENDIX.

mois. d'aout dernier le citoyen Marette, cure de la paroisse, sachant
que I'abbaye du Bee, en vertu d'un droit de la seconde legislature
nationale, devait etre evacuee par les religieux qui I'habitaient,
presenta une requete au directoire du departement de I'Eure, afin
d'etre autorise k transporter dans son eglise le corps et le tombeau
du bienheureux Helloin, qui reposait dans le chapitre de Tabbaye,
avec partie des reliques les moins precieuses et (?des) ornements
qui decoraient I'autel de Fdglise de I'abbaye dans les jours des
grandes fetes.

' Les membres du directoire du departement de I'Eure s'etant
fait un devoir d'accorder au cure toutes ses demandes fondees
sur ce que les precieux depots restant dans une eglise sup-
primde ils seraient privds du culte qu'on leur doit et qu'on leur
rend, il se fit autoriser par la municipality du Bee et par les
freres de charite qui ont bien voulu contribuer aux frais et
travailler k cette exhumation. On ne parvint que le samedi, treize
du present mois, apres beaucoup de travail et de fatigue, k tirer ce
tombeau du sein de la terire oti il etait renferme et convert de la
tombe de marbre, soutenue de quatre ^ petits pilastres, aussi de
marbre, tels qu'ils sont dans I'e'glise vis-a-vis des fonts baptismaux.

' La difficulte du transport, k raison de la pesanteur enorme du
tombeau et la pluie qui tombait depuis un mois, ddtermina le cure
k faire trainer le meme jour — samedi— ce tombeau a force de bras
depuis le chapitre de I'abbaye jusqu'a son e'glise, ou il arriva \
cinq heures du soir et fut place dans I'endroit destind, orne
decemment, environne de cierges, et y demeura expose k la
veneration des fideles pendant toute la journee suivante. Pour
exciter de plus en plus la foi et la pie'te des fideles, on de'couvrit
le dessus de sa tombe, et une foule innombrable de citoyen s en
rendant les honneurs dues \ sa saintete et k ses vertus fut
tdmoin qu'il etait encore dans le meme etat et la meme situation
ou on I'avait trouv^ en mille sept cent sept. II demeura ainsi

> My copyist has certainly written quatre, not six ; but I think that, misguided
by his own experience, he has inadvertently made a clerical error. In the year
1 79 1 there certainly were six pilasters under the stone ; at this moment there are
only four under the wooden slab which has replaced the stone in the parish
church. Of course two of them may have been removed between the spring of
1791 and the autumn of 1792 ; but it is more likely that they disappeared with the
stone. When that was removed I cannot say ; nor can I find anyone who
remembers to have seen it in situ. Doubtless the pillage was effected before the
reopening of the churches for Christian worship. I quite believe the story of its
having been converted into a table de cuisine.

TRANSLATION OF BLESSED HERLWIN. 399

exposd, couvert seulement d'un simple voile, depuis le samedi au
soir jusqu'au dimanche apres la ceremonie.

* Tous les cures circonvoisins avaient ete prie's d'assister a cette
pieuse ceremonie, mais la circonstance du dimanche, et plus encore la
continuite du mauvais temps, les empecherent de s'y rendre ; il ne
s'y trouva que les cures de Saint-Taurin des Ifs, de Bosrobert et le
citoyen Jovar, ci-devant procureur de I'abbaye du Bee. Le meme
dimanche, a deux heures d'apres-midi, quoique la pluie tombat en
averse, le clerge' partit processionnellement pour I'abbaye, accompagnd
du citoyen Ansoult, commissaire du directoire du district de Bernay,
des officiers municipaux du Bee en e'charpes, des freres et seeurs de la
charite et de Sainte-Barbe, avec torches et cierges. Le cure de
Saint-Taurin des Ifs marchait sous le dais en surplis, etole et chape,
accompagne des enfants de choeur en tuniques et le cure de la
paroisse,aussi en dtole, suivi d'un grand concours de peuple. Parvenus
a I'abbaye, ils trouverent la croix et les reliquaires dont il est mention
ci-dessus sur le grand autel. Apres avoir chante le Veni Creator et
quelques antiennes et oraisons en I'honneur des saintes reliques, le
cure de Saint-Taurin donna la benediction au peuple avec la croix,
apres quoi le cure du Bee donna k deux enfants de choeur chacun un
reliquaire k porter, et se chargea des deux pyramides, qu'il porta
lui-meme, et la procession revint a I'eglise paroissiale dans le meme
ordre qu'elle etait alle a I'abbaye au son des cloches. Arrive \ la
paroisse, on deposa les reliques sur I'autel ; le cure monta en chaire et
prononga une courte et pathetique exhortation analogue aux circon-
stances ; apres quoi on chanta solennellement les vepres et complies.
Pendant le Magfiificat le celebrant encensa la croix, les reliquaires
et les autels, et fit aussi rendre les memes honneurs au corps du
bienheureux Helloin, toujours decouvert dans sa tombe. Apres
complies on chanta le salut, donna la benediction avec la croix, et on
entonna le Te Deum, pendant lequel on fut au tombeau du bien-
heureux Helloin ; et k la fin, apres I'avoir encense, chante quelques
antiennes et oraisons et I'avoir invoque comme un puissant
intercesseur aupres de Jesus- Christ, on le couvrit d'une chasuble, et
apres avoir ete recouvert du dessus de sa tombe on remit dessus la
terre qu'on avait enlevee de vis-a-vis des fonts et magonna la tombe
dont il etait decore k Tabbaye, de sorte qu'il est ici comme on I'a
vu depuis environ cent ans au chapitre de I'abbaye.

' Fait et certifie veritable par nous, pretre,'cure de ce lieu, soussigne,
le dit jour et an que dessus. Marette,

' Cure du Bee'

400 APPENDIX.

The marble tombstone has gone — gone past recovery, I fear — but
it was a modern substitute for the original, and, since its inscription
has been fortunately preserved, its loss need not on its own account
greatly afflict us. It has been replaced by a wooden slab of about
the same size, adorned with a painting intended to represent
Herlwin ; but this is a modern concern and of no value. Dean
Church in his *Life of St. Anselm' borrows a somewhat misleading
account of Le Bee from the pages of Mr. Freeman. Neither of
those gentlemen can have been on the spot, and the 'effigy' of
which the latter speaks has no existence.

I spent a few days in the exquisite little valley of Le Bee in
the August of the eight-hundredth year after Herlwin's death.
It was not my first visit ; and I confess that I went there then
only that I might prove the melancholy pleasure of being in
such a spot on such an occasion. I need scarcely say that the
oldest part of the monastery at the date of its abandonment
was the chapter house ; that the church, though far less ancient,
was next to it in antiquity ; and that the least modern structure next
after the church was the bell tower, a detached and, fortunately, very
massive piece of architecture. The cloister and other buildings were
modern in style, as in date. Most of the latter have been allowed to
stand ; so, too, has the tower, thanks to the solidity of its construc-
tion, although itsjihhe has been removed. But of the church and —
incomparably more deplorable to the antiquary — of the chapter house
not a stone remains in situ. Still I could identify the site of
Herlwin's church ; I knew the site of his chapter house ; I could
people the surrounding sward with its sorrow-stricken crowd ; and
as the shadow of night fell, and silvery mists floated up the valley,
I could say, ' 'Twas at this moment, eight hundred years ago, that
this hushed and silent air was thronged with angels waiting for the
soul of Herlwin.'

On the following day the cure of a neighbouring commune —for,
sad to say, Le Bee Hellouin, although no inconsiderable village, has
not its own priest — said mass in the parish church in honour of /^
biejtheureux Hellouin. The attendance might perhaps have been more
numerous than it was ; but all who came — and they were more than
ordinarily come even to a Sunday mass — had bunches of flowers,
which they laid on the tomb. This had been adorned with a canopy
of silk and with a cross and lighted candles. After the mass the
priest and his assistants came down from the altar to the tomb,
preceded by singing men in copes and a confraternity bearing their

THE PROPER MASS OF ST. ELPHEGE. 401

proper badge. Hymns were now sung and prayers recited, after
which the nosegays were blessed with the usual ceremonies, to be
presently reclaimed by their several owners. More than this could
scarcely perhaps have been attempted under existing circumstances \
less certainly might have been done. This blessing of the flowers
on Herlwin's tomb in the parish church of Le Bee was a custom
observed annually until some few years ago, and seems to have
been a perpetuation of one of the little traditional ceremonies
observed in the olden days in the chapter house upon the recurrence
of the twenty-sixth of August.

The prods-verbal drawn up on the occasion of the disinter-
ment of Herlwin's remains in 1707 is quoted in Charpillon's
' Dictionnaire Historique de toutes les Communes du Departement de
I'Eure.' * On trouva dans le sarcophage un corps . revetu d'une
chasuble, ayant a sa gauche une crosse de bois et a ses pieds et jambes
des pantoufles et des petites bottines. Le dit corps etait dans sa
situation naturelle, sans qu'aucune partie fut deplacee, quoique toutes
les chairs fussent consommees ; la tete un peu recourbee, parce que
le tombeau etait trop court ; la machoire belle et les dents blanches ;
les mains dessus la poitrine ; la crosse n'ayant pas de bout recourbe,
peut-etre k cause de la petitesse du tombeau. Une des pantoufles,
decousue par le bout, laissait voir distinctement les doigts du pied.'

ANECDOTON F (p. 239).

THE PROPER MASS OF ST. ELPHEGE.

The following fragment of a mass of St. Elphege is preserved in
the Vatican Library. Alas that there should be no more of it !

* custodiat. per dominum.

* Pr/efatio.

'eterne deus. In cujus amoris virtute beatissimus martyr Elfegus
hostem derisit, tormenta sustinuit, mortem suscepit. Quique ab
ecclesia tua tantb gloriosior praedicatur quantb (per) sui devotionem
officii bino moderamine effulsit. Ut in uno creditum sibi populum
tibi domino deo conciliaret, in altero semetipsum in odorem suayi(ta) -
tis sacrificium offerret, in utroque filii tui domini nostri jesu christi
fidelis imitator existeret. Qui pro omnium salute tibi seterno patri
suo preces effudit et peccati typographum quod antiquus hostis contra
nos tenuit proprii sanguinis effusione delevit Et ideo.
VOL. I. D D

402 APPENDIX.

' POSTCOMMUNIO.

' Grata tibi siiit omnipotens Deus nostras servitutis obsequia, ut
illius interventu nobis salutaria reddantur pro cujus immarcessibili
gloria exhibentur. Per.'

NOTE A (p. i).
ST. anselm's pedigree.
^ 1. On the Social Rank of his Parents.

It was customary in the eleventh century to indicate the social
position of a nobilis by the term dignitas generis ; not by tiobilitas
generis^ which embraced a higher, and therefore a narrower, area.
To claim nohilitas generis a man must have been the kinsman, or at
any rate the affinis^ of a king ; but, as there were no royal marriage
acts in those days, and as the reach of canonical affinity was far more
extensive than at present, the number of people who could claim
nobilitas generis was exceedingly numerous. Still the difference be-
tween dignitas generis and nobilitas generis was distinct and well
defined.

Nobilitas carnis, in its turn, covered a higher and narrower area
than nobilitas generis, and included none but the blood relations of
kings.

Nobilitas linecs, again, was applied to none but the lineal descend-
ants of kings, and I suspect none but lineal descendants in the male
line ; but of this I cannot feel certain.

Nobilitas natalium, if indeed the term existed — for I feel sure that
I have seen it, although I cannot find it in my commonplace book —
must have been used to indicate a person whose mother was royal
as well as his father.

And the last and proper home of nobilitas was the prince him-
self, who was addressed as nobilitas vestra. So that the style nobilitas
vestra was never given to a mere nobilis, as when your inferior calls
you * your honour ; ' nor to a peer, as when we say ' your lordship ; '
but only to the prince.

I will not weary the reader with a proof of this entire statement,
but will content myself with subjoining a few passages in illustration
of my general meaning.

St. Yves of Chartres was gently born, for he was * nobili h. san-
guine natus ; ' but he distinctly assures us (Ep. 3) that he had not
nobilitas generis.

That bishop himself, writing (Ep. 5) to the Countess Adela, says,

'NOBILITAS; 'NOBILITER: 403

* Regius in excellentia vestra sanguis ex utraque linea descendens
nobilitatem generis in oculis hominum commendat.'

Duke Richard III. of Normandy, in his marriage contract with
the daughter of the King of France, says, ' Haec omnia tibi ....
transfundo, ut,juxta nobilitatis tuae lineam dotata .... mihi jun-
garis.'

And the epitaph on the tomb of Queen Matilda, the consort of
Henry I., was : —

O regina potens, Anglorum linea regum,
Scotos nobilitans nobilitate tua.

I take these instances at haphazard out of a large number, and I
do so in illustration of my meaning, not in proof of my position ; for
that would require a dissertation, which would be more than appears
necessary in the present connection. For the word about which I
am concerned is not nobilitas, but nobiliter.

At the very opening of his ' Life of St. Anselm ' Eadmer says, * I
shall say a few words about the family and character of each of his
parents, that thus the reader may have a sufficient idea of the origin
and root of that which in due time was so illustrious in him whose
parents they were destined to be. His father's name was Gundulf,
his mother's Ermenberg. Both of them, in the world's phrase when
it notes social rank (' juxtasaeculi dignitatem '), were nobiliter nati, and
lived at Aosta in a style proper to the nobiliter nati(^ nobiliter conver-
sati sunt '). They were not ignobiles in rank (' divitiis '), but unlike
each other in character.^

All, then, that Eadmer says about their origin is, that they were
nobiliter nati ; of their rank, that they were divitiis non ignobilis ; and
of their state, that they lived nobiliter. In other words, the fulfilment
of Eadmer's somewhat verbose promise about the origin of Gundulf
and of Ermenberg is comprised in two words — nobiliter nati.

What, then, does nobiliter status mea.n ? What is the technical and
conventional sense which the eleventh century attached to it?

Like nobilitas in the phrases I instanced just now, it is not the
correlative of 7iobilis, but relates to a far higher and far smaller circle
than that of nobiles.

^ I think, however, that the right reading must be, not * ambo divitiis non
ignobiles, sed moribus ex quadam parte dissimiles,' which reads like a false
antithesis, but *ambo divitiis non impares, sed moribus ex quadam parte dissimiles.'
But be the right reading what it may, it does not appertain to my present enquiry.
Diviti'2 denotes rank, not property, as when we talk conventionally of the * rich
and the poor.'

D D 2

404 APPENDIX.

If I wished to say, in eleventh-century Latin, ' He behaved like
a gentleman,' I should eschew such a phrase as nobiliter egit ; but if I
wished to say, ' He played his proper part as a king,' nobiliter egit
would be precisely what I wanted.

But the question I wish to answer is, What sort of people were
Eadmer's nobiliter natil What sort of people were his nobiliter
conversati? Of all the rings in the social target, which ring were they ?
Were they the children of kings, and none else ; or the lineal
descendants of kings, and none else ; or the blood relations of kings,
and none else ; or was the idea of royalty, after all, not a necessary
factor in its meaning ?

Has it, however, a precise meaning of its own ? Such a phrase
as nobiliter copidata may, by the borrowed light of the context, mean
' royally married ; ' but if there were no context what would it mean ?
I think its own proper meaning is ' like a prince,' ' in princely fashion,'
and the like, not 'nobly.' Thus (i) Rudolf Glaber (iii. 4) says of
a certain Herve who clearly belonged to the haute noblesse that, ut
generosioribus mos est, he was nobiliter ediicatus. (2) The biographer
of St. Mayeul tells us of that famous abbot who was 'praeclaro
stemmate natus,' ' clarissimis natalibus ortus,' ' ex utroque parente
gemina nobilitate coruscus,' ' de nobilissima prole,' and ' Gallicana
generositate conspicuus,' that, sicut generosioribus mos est, he was
nobiliter educatus (cxlii. 652). (3) Archbishop Lanfranc, writing to
Queen Margaret of Scotland, says of her that she was * regali stirpe
regaliter progenita, regaliter educata ; nobili regi nobiliter copulata '
(cl. 549). (4) St. Anselm, in his superscription of a letter to the
bride of the King of Denmark combines the adverb nobiliter with
regia nobilitas, as follows : ' Venerabili dominae, regia nobilitate, sed
nobiliiis morum probitate, pollenti.'

If, then, nobiliter educatus be a term properly applicable to none
but the generosio7'es, and if kings and queens can be said to be
nobiliter copiUati, people who are described as nobiliter nati, nobiliter
conversati must certainly be members of the higher nobility, and may
certainly be royal.

I now turn to another phrase, mediocritas nataliuni. For William
of Malmesbury writes thus of St. Anselm : ' De Anselmo est sermo,
qui, in Augusta civitate oriundus .... mediocritatem natalium
in clarissimam famam face virtutum suarum extulit.'

What, then, is mediocritas natalium 2 Clearly not the birth of a
mere mediocris, any more than nobilitas natalium is the birth of a
mere nobilis -y but probably the next best thing of its kind after

' MEDIOCRITAS NATALIUM: 405

nohilitas natalium. The man who was sprung from a line of princes
had nohilitas linece^ whatever his mother may have been ; but I believe
that he needed what was called aqua prosapia to give him the still
higher distinction of nohilitas natalium.

Suppose, however, that a child's mother were the lineal descendant
of kings, but not his father ; would he have nohilitas linece ? By no
means. The mother has it, but not the child, because the father is
not royal. Has he nohilitas natalium ? No ; because, although the
mother that bare him was royal, he was not born in the purple.
What, then, is his state ? His state, as I believe, is that of medio-
critas natalium. I cannot prove my contention, I confess ; for
although I have been for now several years on the look-out for the
phrase, I have only found one other instance of its occurrence, and
that instance is not productive of much definite information. Still
that instance is so far confirmatory as that it renders it probable that
there were degrees of mediocritas natalium. A royal father gives you
nohilitas linece, whatever your mother may be ; and what you receive
from him, that you transmit to your children. But not so with a
royal mother, your father not being royal. You and your sister have
in that case 7Jiedioc7'itas natalium ; but if your sister marries non-
royally then her children have in their turn a modified mediocritas
nataliu?n. It is in some such way as this that I am disposed to
account for the qualifying adjective in Guibert of Nogent, whose
father was claiis hene naturalibus propagatus, and who renders especial
thanks to God for his own hona mediocritas natalium. His father, I
mean, was a member of the higher nobility, but his maternal grand-
mother, or maternal great-grandmother, was royally descended in the
male line. Had his mother been thus descended, he would have, I
apprehend, taken care not to put in a qualifying adjective, and would
have thanked God simply for his mediocritas natalium.

If, then, this guess of mine be correct, St. Anselm's father was
not royal ; not, I mean, royal by lineal transmission of royalty from
father to son. Still he was generosior. I at one time thought that
he might be descended from King Berenger II., but I cannot find that
Berenger II. had any granddaughter or great-granddaughter, resident
at least in Italy or married to a Lombard husband ; and the convic-
tion that, if he had been a grandson or a grandson's son in the male
line of Berenger II., his son would have been described as possessing
nohilitas ?iataliu7n, or at any rate nohilitas linece, has put me off that
quest. I have therefore searched elsewhere.

4o6 APPENDIX,

I have nothing to add to these preliminary remarks but the
following from a poem written after St. Anselm's death : —

Relligio, morum probitas, et splendor avorum,

Littera, deliciDS, formaque cum facie,
Vivere si facerent, non sic mea membra jacerent

Hac constricta domo j sic erit omnis homo.

And these lines, written in his lifetime by his friend William of
Chester : —

Laudari proles procerum pede debet Homeri ;

Da veniam, timui pondera tanta pati.
* * * *

Tu generosus homo, magnisque parentibus ortus,

Exsuperas morum nobilitate genus.

What was it, then, that made St. Anselm a proles procerum and a
generosus hoi?io ? What was his spleiidor avorum ? How came he to
have nobilitas generis and mediocritas natalium ? What did Eadmer
know of his pedigree that he should say of his parents, * nobiliter nati,
nobiliter conversati sunt ' ?

§ 2. On Gundulfs Ancestry.

Towards the end of his life St. Anselm wrote a letter to Count
Humbert H. of Maurienne, who enjoyed the additional titles of
Count of Aosta and Marquis of Susa, in reply to a communication
from that prince reminding him that they were consanguinei. They,
therefore, had a common ancestor within seven steps from Count
Humbert, who was considerably the younger man of the two. Now
Humbert's paternal grandmother, Adelaide, was Marchioness of Susa
in her own right, being the daughter of Manfred II., Marquis of
Susa ; and, as I cannot find that either the father's father or the
father of Adelaide's husband married a Lombard, and as the former
of those princes was a stranger from the far north when he settled in
the Valley of Maurienne, I look for the common ancestor of Anselm
and Humbert in the forefathers of the Marchioness, and not in those
of her consort. It is possible, then, and I think probable, that the
common ancestor of Anselm and Humbert is to be sought either in
Adelaide's great-grandfather Arduin III., Marquis of Turin and Susa,
or in his son and successor Manfred I.

Manfred I., then, Marquis of Susa, died iioi. Can he have
been Gundulfs grandfather? Clearly he may have been, by the
hypothesis. I believe that he was.

ST. ANSELM'S PATERNAL DESCENT. 407

For if it be objected that some other person than the paternal
grandfather of the Marchioness Adelaide may have been the com-
mon parent of St. Anselm and Humbert II., there is an answer at
hand to the objection in the very letter to which I have referred.
* Your Highness does me a great honour, me, whose kinsmen rejoice
in being your vassals, in saying that I am bound to you by the ties of
blood (' consanguinitate copulari ').... My conscience tells me that
I have always with heart unfeigned, before ever I saw you, held your
prosperity and successes dear to me. For, mindful of the fact that
naturaliter a progenitoribus I owe you the duty of a subject, I have
never let the love of you be absent from my bosom.' In other words,
Humbert's tie of consanguinity to Anselm was, at the same time his
tie of lordship, and as Humbert was Anselm's lord in virtue of
territorial inheritance, it was to a territorial predecessor of Humbert's
that one of Anselm's progenitores had been vassal. I conclude,
therefore, that I am right in looking for the common ancestor in
some earlier Marquis of Turin and Susa, or in some earlier Marquis
of Ivrea.

Now Gundulf cannot have been the first of his race thus to
pay homage to either such marquis, for a father is not a progenitor^
but a grandfather is. A great-grandfather, again, would not, I
think, have been called a progenitor^ great-grandfathers being
antecessores. If, then, Anselm's paternal grandfather was the first
of his race to play the part of vassal to a contemporary prince,
whether of Susa or Ivrea, and if his grandfather and that contempo-
rary prince were sprung from the same stock, we may feel pretty
safe in concluding (i) that the common ancestor of St. Anselm and
the contemporary Count of Maurienne was either Manfred I. or
Arduin, that prince's father, and (2) that the relation of lordship and
vassalage between the two races was established in the persons of
Manfred II. and the father of Gundulf.

Whether Gundulf s father did homage to Manfred II. in his own
name or in his wife's is a question I cannot answer ; but I incline to
the former alternative, and believe him to have been that prince's
brother, and to have been invested by him with part of the con-
fiscated property of their ruined cousin Arduin, Marquis of Ivrea.

The following scheme, then, exhibits what I believe to have been
Gundulf's relationship with the great houses of Ivrea, the house
of Turin and Susa, and the house of Maurienne and Aosta, titles
for the first time united in the person of Humbert II. : —

4o8

APPENDIX,

Arduin Glabrio,
Marquis of Turin and Susa

Dado = N. N.
Marquis of
Ivrea

Arduin,

Marquis of Ivrea and

King of Italy

I

N. N.* = Manfred I.,
Marquis of Turin and Susa

Berenger II.,
Marquis of Ivrea and
King of Ital)'

RiCHiLDA = Conrad

N. N.

GUNDULF = ErMENBERG

St. Anselm

I

Manfred II.,

Marquis of Turin,

Susa, and Ivrea

I
Odo = Adelaide,

Marchioness of

Turin, Susa,

and Ivrea

Amadeus IL,
Count of Maurienne and Aosta

Humbert II.,
Marquis of Turin, Susa, and Ivrea,
and Count of Maurienne and Aosta.

* Daughter of Atto, Count of Reggio, the paternal grandfather of Boniface, Duke and
Marquis of Tuscany, the father of the illustrious Matilda.

§ 3. On Ermenberg's Ancestry.

I believe Ermenberg, the mother of St. Ansehu, to have been a
niece of Rudolf III., and thus a granddaughter of Conrad the
Pacific, who preceded that prince on the throne of Transjuran
Burgundy.

I also believe her to have been a niece of Anselm II., Bishop,
and probably Count, of Aosta early in the eleventh century and until
the year 1020, when he died. I proceed to justify these opinions.

I. In the year 1025 Conrad the Salic conferred the see of Toul
upon his second cousin, Bruno of Ensheim, who happened to be
with him in Lombardy while he was engaged in chastising the
rebellious Milanese. Bruno lost no time in setting forth for his
diocese, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the Emperor, who
feared he might be molested on his journey through Lombardy, but
took the precaution of detaching himself from the main body of his
retinue and travelling some hours in advance of them with only a
few attendants. His route lay along the via regia, which ran
through Ivrea up the valley of Aosta as far as that city, and across
the great St. Bernard. Passing unsuspected through Ivrea in broad
daylight, he continued his journey for some nine or ten miles, when
he alighted at Carema,^ a little town on the border of the Valdostan
territory, for he was in need of rest and was forty miles from Aosta.

' The Bollandists (April 19) read 'locus qui dicitur ad Cameram,' and add a
note to say that the place meant is La Chambre, in Savoy. This explanation

ST. ANSELM'S MATERNAL DESCENT. 409

The sun was already low in the west when his retinue entered
Ivrea, intending to sleep there, but were at once surrounded by a
crowd of eager and excited Lombards, who peered into the face
of each, hoping to recognise Bruno. Perplexed by their failure, the
Ivreans took counsel during the night, when some one bethought
himself of the little group of travellers who had ridden through the
town the day before. The fleetest horsemen that could be had were
at once despatched in pursuit of them, and, galloping into Carema
just as its gates were opened, learnt that there were travellers there
sleeping heavily after a toilsome journey. They awoke them, se-
cured them, and carried them back to Ivrea, rejoicing to think that
Bruno was caught. No such thing. Heaven had interposed with
what the biographer calls a jocoswn miraculum ; for Bruno, rising
betimes but unwilling to disturb his jaded attendants, had set forth
up the valley, intending to ride on at his leisure and let them over-
take him, and was only a double arrow's flight out of the place by
one gate when his pursuers entered it by the other. The story does
not say what became of Bruno's retinue, but hastens to inform us
that his wants were soon supplied by his sister-in-law, whose name is
not given, but of whom it is enough to know that she was a niece of

takes no note of the preposition ad, and, what is worse, it involves an impossibility.
Ivrea and La Chambre are about a hundred miles distant from each other, and
are separated by a range of mountains. The place which they print ' ad Cameram '
must have been somewhere in the valley of Aosta ; of this there can be no doubt,
and it must have been on or close to the line of demarcation between Italy and
the county of Aosta. Now the Valdostan territory extended for forty Roman
miles down the valley, measuring from Aosta, on the establishment of the colony
under Augustus ; and the boundary of the duchy embraced Carema, until in the
year 1564 it was shifted so as to exclude it. Until 1564, that is to say, the boun-
dary of the duchy would seem to have been identical with the boundary mentioned
by Bruno's biographer as the limit of geographical Italy. The Valdostansare not
Italians. But, however, Bruno crossed the boundary and entered Carema, or, as
it seems then to have been called, 'ad Caremam.' This form 'ad Caremam ' I
suppose to have been the nearest Latin that could be found for the vernacular,
whatever that may have been. But it is curious that the vernacular seems to have
retained the preposition ad, and also the final ;« of a Latin accusative. I have
never seen any conjectures about the name, and cannot say if the vernacular word
represented by ' ad caremam '— possibly, however, it was ' ad carema ' — was mas-
culine or feminine. Philologists must know. But it is interesting to find that by
the eleventh century there existed in the valley of Aosta a cognate word to the
Italian carema and the French carhne, with which we are all familiar. Ad care-
main, or whatever the vernacular may have been, must have represented the
classical ad qtiadragesinmm (i.e. ad quadragesimum lapidem). The place lies, as
I have said, forty Roman miles from Aosta. Similarly Quart and Nus are four and
nine miles distant from that city.

4IO APPENDIX.

King Rudolf III., and that her husband's name was Gerard, Count
of Ensheim.

Now I beHeve Ermenberg to have been a younger sister of this
lady, Countess of Ensheim and niece of King Rudolf.

II. King Conrad the Pacific, father of Rudolf III. and grandfather
of the Countess of Ensheim, had been twice married, his second
queen being Matilda of France, a daughter of Louis d'Outremer.
Her dowry comprised the city and county, or city and exarchate, of
Lyons, which, like Aosta, Lausanne, Vienne, Sion, and numberless
other places in that age, was a civitas episcopalis. No sooner, then,
did King Conrad receive this accession to his kingdom than he
bestowed it upon a son, Burchard, issue of his first marriage, who
retained his double dignity of ecclesiastical pastor and territorial
prince for upwards of half a century, dying in the year 1031.

On the death, however, of Archbishop Burchard, a nephew of
his who bore the same name as himself, and who, as being his
nephew, was a grandson of Conrad the Pacific, hurried to Lyons
and made himself master of the city, which he governed, as his uncle
had done, in the double capacity of ecclesiastical and territorial
ruler; for he was already a bishop with a diocese of his own in
another part of the kingdom. But scarcely had he established
himself in Lyons when his uncle King Rudolf died, bequeathing
his kingdom to the Emperor Conrad the Salic, who at once made it
his business to oust the new Archbishop of Lyons, whom he con-
sidered dangerous. Now, this new Archbishop of Lyons, grandson
of Conrad the Pacific and nephew of the previous Archbishop, had
been Bishop of Aosta since the year 1020. So that in the year 1025,
when Bruno was succoured in his troubles, there were two grand-
children of King Conrad's at Aosta, who must either have been
cousins or else brother and sister — namely, the reigning bishop and
the Countess of Ensheim.

When the Emperor had ousted Bishop Burchard of Aosta from
the archiepiscopate of Lyons, the claim was taken up by a cer-
tain nobleman, who put forward a mere child of his own, a
picerulus quidam, as legitimate successor; and as it is hard
to conceive what claim a mere child can have had but an
hereditary one, the most obvious inference is that the puerulus
quidam was Bishop Burchard's nephew, and that his father, a * certain
Count Gerard,' was Count Gerard of Ensheim. It is, therefore,
reasonable to believe that Bishop Burchard of Aosta and the
Countess of Ensheim were brother and sister ; and, as their precise

THE COUNT-BISHOPS OF AOSTA. 411

relationship does not affect my argument — as, I mean, it is indifferent
to me whether they were brother and sister or cousins — I will
adopt that belief as the more probable of two alternatives.

III. I said at the beginning of this note that Eadmer's description
of the birth and state of Ermenberg invites us to believe that she
was at least generosior by origin, and may have been royal. I incline
to the latter alternative, for a reason which I must now give.

We have two letters of St. Anselm's to his maternal uncles
Lambert and Folcerad, in each of which he calls them reverendi
domini] a style which he never assigned — and his contemporaries
seem to have followed the same rule — to any but princes, abbots, and
bishops. We have letters of his to canons, to archdeacons, to all
sorts of people ; but, with the exception of abbots, bishops, and
of course popes, none but princes are styled reverendi dommt\ none
but princesses reverendce domince. Reveretitia was an old traditional
term used to indicate royalty, like our ' highness ; ' and I sus-
pect that to style a canon — Lambert and Folcerad were canons —
reverefidus do7ninus in respect of his canonry would have been much
the same as it would be with us to say 'your grace' to an
archdeacon.

This is, in my poor judgment, a fact of very considerable im-
portance indeed, and encourages me to pursue the enquiry.

So much, then, for the present in recommendation of the opinion
that one of Ermenberg's grandfathers was Conrad the Pacific, King
of Burgundy. It is time to turn our attention to Anselm II., Bishop
of Aosta, whom I believe to have been her uncle on one side, as I
believe Rudolf III. to have been her uncle on the other.

IV. The ecclesiastical history of Aosta gives us three bishops
of the name of Anselm in charge of that see in the course of about
a century — namely, Anselm I., whom we meet in the year 923, and
who was succeeded by Bishop Boso ; after Bishop Boso Anselm II.,
whom we meet as late as 1002 ; and after Anselm II. the third of
the name, who seems to have acted as coadjutor to the Bishop
Burchard already mentioned.

Now Anselm I. was not only Bishop, he was also Count, ot
Aosta ; a fact of considerable moment in our enquiry. For towards
the close of the tenth century the privilege of hereditary suc-
cession was already so firmly established in Transjuran Burgundy
that an attempt made to violate it in the year looi was the signal for
a rebellion from end to end of the kingdom. I am not presumptuous,
therefore, in supposing the second successor of Anselm I. in the

412 APPENDIX.

earldom to have been a great-nephew. But not only were the great
Burgundian fiefs hereditary ; the great Burgundian counts had long
been in the habit of disposing after their own pleasure of the
bishoprics within their domains ; and if the second military successor
of Anselm I. was a great-nephew, nothing is more likely than that
his second ecclesiastical successor should also have been a great-
nephew, and thus either the Count himself, or the Count's brother,
or the Count's cousin. But this is immaterial ; and the fact to which
I now wish to direct attention is that the name of the father ot
Anselm II. was Count Anselm, and that we have three Anselms in
as many generations — Bishop Anselm I. ; Count Anselm, his nephew,
as I believe ; and Count Anselm's son, Bishop Anselm 11. In short,
Anselm seems to have been a family name.

V. Now Bishop Anselm II. was a relation of King Rudolf III.
That prince in the year 1014 caused a deed to be executed in which
he specified first his queen, Ermengard, then Counts Berthold, Rodolt
and Robert, then Hugh of Sion, Henry of Lausanne, and Hugh of
Geneva, and after these again ' Burchard of Lyons, Anselm of Aosta,
and Pandulf, with the rest of (my) brothers.'

But Rudolf III. and Anselm II. were not sons of the same father ;
neither were they sons of the same mother ; 4;hey must therefore have
been brothers by canon law, the brother of one of them having
married the sister of the other. And this is just the union I want
(i) for the parentage of Bishop Burchard, who was certainly nephew
to Rudolf III., and in all probability nephew to Anselm IL, his
predecessor in the see of Aosta, and (2) for the parentage of the
Countess of Ensheim. Thus : —

King Conrad the Pacific Count Anselm

I I

King Rudolf III. Abp. Burchard N. N. = N. N. Bp, Anselm II.

of Lyons
(Abbot of St. Maurice)

of Aosta

Bp, Burchard N. N.= Count Gerard

of Aosta, and then Abp. of Lyons |

(Provost of St. Maurice) pueruhis quidam,

intrusive Abp. of Lyons

Now, what I want to do is to make Ermenberg the sister (i) of
Bishop Burchard of Aosta and (2) of the Countess of Ensheim. And
I think I may do so without presumption : for I cannot see what
can have entitled her brothers to the designation of reverendi domini
but such relationship to the Kings of Burgundy as would thus be
assigned to them.

THE COUNTS OF MAURIENNE AND AOSTA. 413

I have only one more remark to make before proceeding to
another branch of the subject. I do not know who Anselm III.
was — the Anselm, I mean, who was coepiscopiis of Aosta in Bishop
Burchard's time — nor is the subject an important one. Still if we
make him that prelate's brother, and bear in mind the fact that
our saint had a nephew with the same name as himself, we have
six Anselms in as many generations. Thus :—

Bishop Anselm I. N. N.

of Aosta I

Count Anselm

N. N. = N. N. Bishop Anselm II.

I of Aosta

III I

Rp. BuRCHARD Anselm III., Ermenberg=Gundulf N. N.= Count Gerard
of Aosta, Coepiscopus I

and then of Aosta |

Abp. of Lyons \~~~ ^1

St. Anselm Richera = Burgundius

I

Anselm

VI. I proceed with my argument. The house of Maurienne
came into existence in 1000. Bishop Anselm II. died in 1020.
In 1025 we for the first time find the title Count of Aosta borne
by a Count of Maurienne.

Assuming, then, that Anselm II., like Anselm I., was Count of
Aosta as well as Bishop, it follows that the secular title passed
upon his death to the house of Maurienne. The ostensible reason
of this transference may have been that there was no one of his
own kin capable of performing military service for the Emperor,
who was the designated heir to the crown of Burgundy ; the real
reason must have been that the new bishop and his family, who
who were near relations to Rudolf III., might prove troublesome to
Rudolf's alien successor. But that the transference was effected in
open violation of all right, or that having been thus effected no
record of the fact should survive, are improbable suppositions ; nor
is it likely that the Emperor would have invoked the certain disaster
that would follow so outrageous an injustice by way of assuring his
succession to the crown. I suspect, then, that the transference was
effected by means of a matrimonial alliance, and that, just as in 1032
Turin, Susa, and Ivrea were handed over to the house of Maurienne
by the marriage of the Marchioness Adelaide to Count Odo, so at

414

APPENDIX.

an earlier date had the succession to the lordship of the valley of
Aosta been secured to Odo's father, Count Humbert, by that prince's
marriage with a sister of Bishop Aiiselm II. ; in which case the wife
of Count Humbert I. no doubt bore a name proper to her race,
Anci being no doubt a feminine cognate form with Anselm ; and
the * progenitores mei ' of the saint's letter to his kinsman receives its
strict literal interpretation of ' both my grandfathers.'

My ignorance of the name of Ermenberg's father cannot affect her
relationship. He was not improbably the Pandulf who figures as a
brother of Rudolf III. ; in which case her descent is to be tabulated
thus : —

Conrad the Pacific,
King of Transjuran Burgundy

Rudolf III.,

King of
Transjuran
Burgundy

Anselm
I

BuKCHARD, Pandulf = N. N.

Abp. and

Count of Lyons

(Abbot of

St. Maurice)

Anselm II.

Bishop and

Count of Aosta

BURCHARD,

I

1

r

1 1

ERMENBERG == GUNDULF

Bishop of Aosta,

>

5^

o

1

subsequently Abp,

3

St. Anselm

and Count of Lyons

» II

5 8

(Provost of St.

o

H

Maurice)

1

n

p

o §

^.

3

£J H

o

C3 -— :

o

3

gg^O

►a

o

s ^

c:

s,?«

W

^^>

o

w"" »

."• o a

I

O

92^

Ansel= Humbert I.,
Count of
Maurienne and
subsequently
of Aosta
I

Odo = Adelaide

Amadeus II.

Humbert II.

o n>
"1 '"' a"

It would be an endless task to show all the relationships that
might be established in virtue of St. Anselm's pedigree. It may,
however, interest the reader to see at a glance what was the prelate's
connexion with other descendants of his great-grandfather, Conrad
the Pacific.

Conrad the Pacific = Matilda, daughter of Louis d'Outremer, King of France.
Matilda = Baldwin IV., Count of Flanders.
Baldwin V., Count of Flanders.
Matilda = William the Conqueror.

DUKE WILLIAM'S MARRIAGE. 415

Conrad the Pacific = Matilda.

Gerberg = Herman II., Duke of Swabia.

Matilda = Frederick II., Duke of Lorraine.

Beatrice = Boniface, Duke and Marquis of Tuscany.

Matilda.

Conrad the Pacific = Matilda.
Gisela = Henry of Bavaria.
Henry II., Emperor.

Conrad the Pacific = Matilda.
Gerberg = Herman II., Duke of Swabia.
Gisela = Conrad the Salic, Emperor.
Henry III., Emperor.
Henry IV., Emperor.

Our saint was thus second cousin to the Conqueror's queen,
second cousin to the mother of the Marchioness Matilda, second
cousin to the Emperor Henry III., father of Henry IV. His mother
was first cousin to the Emperor Henry II.

NOTE B (p. 94).

ON THE CANONICAL IMPEDIMENT TO DUKE WILLIAM's MARRIAGE.

I know of no author who has explained the grounds of objection
to William's marriage with Matilda. Whilst some have declared that
there was no impediment at all, and others have thought fit to suggest
that Leo IX. prohibited the marriage because there were political
interests of his own which might have been thwarted by it, Mr. Freeman
has adopted, with slight but immaterial modification, the argument
advanced some thirty years ago by Mr. Stapleton in the * Archaeological
Journal,' that Matilda was already another man's wife. He says, 'The
panegyrists of William keep out of sight the fact revealed to us by a
comparison of several documents and incidental statements that
Matilda was the mother of a son and a daughter of whom William
was not the father.' Why Mr. Freeman should accuse none but
William's panegyrists of such reticence as this I will not stop to
enquire. I note the rhetorical device, and pass on. 'She had already
been married to Gerbod, a man of distinction in Flanders. To him
she bore two children. ... It is certain, though no one would have
guessed it from any of the writers who record the marriage, that the
bride of William was already the mother of two children by another
man.' ^ ' Mr. Stapleton,' continues our learned and ingenious

* Norman Conquest y iii. 85.

4i6 APPENDIX.

historian, * has, I think, convincingly made out' the proposition ' that
Matilda was before her marriage with William the mother of Gerbod
and Gundrade.'

Now, I do not doubt the truth of the proposition thus accepted
by such an authority. I do not doubt it, for I deny it ; and I deny
it without reservation. There was not a drop of Matilda's blood in
the veins of Gundrade. Further, I willingly concede that Gerbod
and Gundrade were brother and sister, and I assert with confidence
that there was not a drop of Matilda's blood in Gerbod.

Gundrade, I need scarcely say, was the wife of William of
Warenne, the first of his race who bore the title of Earl of Surrey.

Earl William employs, or is reputed to have employed, the
following words in one of the Lewes charters : ' Pro salute dominae
meae Matildis reginse matris uxoris meae.' And William the Con-
queror says, or is reputed to have said, in another document, ' Pro
anima .... Gundradae filiae meae.' Mr. Stapleton and Mr. Freeman
accept the first statement ; but the brief they hold invites them to
reject the second. I accept both one and the other ; but whilst
accepting them I still raaintam that there was not a drop of Matilda's
blood in the veins of Gundrade, and I also declare that neither was
there a drop of William's blood in them.

But even if Mr. Freeman were right in his conjecture that
Gundrade was a stepdaughter of the Conqueror's, he is as far as ever
from the solution of the real difficulty. Even if he could prove that
Matilda at the time of her espousals was not a maid but a wife, he
would not therefore have explained away the concurrent testimony
of contemporary historians that William and Matilda were con-
sanpdnei. The only impediment alleged by contemporary authors
is that of consanguinity, and human testimony is at an end if we are
not to give the most intelligible of words the only meaning it ever had
or ever could have had.

No remarks of mine can be needed to give force to this objection.
It is fatal, absolute, not to be gainsaid. The idea that, I will not say
men like Orderic and William of Malmesbury, but that any man who
ever wrote should have dreamt of explaining that Matilda was the
undivorced wife of Gerbod by saying that she was the kinswoman of
some other man, lies wide even of the limits of incredibility, and they
are wide enough. It is as impossible as the square root of a minus
quantity, and I shall waste no more words on it.

It must have been a sense of this objection that has led Mr.
Freeman to enquire whether, after all, by the impediment of consan-

CONSANGUINITY. 417

guinity that of affinity may not have been meant. ' Matilda's
mother had been married, or rather betrothed, to William's uncle. . . .
I am not canonist enough to say whether this would have been an
impediment to a marriage between Richard's nephew and Adela's
daughter.' ^ And again, ' It is by no means easy to see any reason-
able ground for the prohibition on any of the usual ecclesiastical
theories of affinity.' ^ On these sentences I need do no more than
remark as follows : —

1. It surely requires no profound knowledge of canon law to
consult such works, and even to understand them, as treat of cases
like that of the betrothal of Matilda's mother to William's uncle, a
betrothal not followed by cohabitation.

2. Our quest would be not for reasonable grounds, but for legal
grounds, had such prohibition as Mr. Freeman suggests ever been
issued.

3. The usual ecclesiastical theories of affinity are not the only
theories that have ever been held. But, after all,

4. The marriage was not forbidden because the contracting parties
were affines, but because they were consanguinei.

I do not know if Mr. Stapleton ever tried to discover William's
relationship by blood to Matilda. All that Mr. Freeman says on
this subject is that 'it is by no means easy to trace up the pedigree of
William and Matilda to a common ancestor,' and ' there is no small
difficulty in making out what the nearness of kin between William
and Matilda was.' ^

Be that as it may, the contemporaries of William and Matilda
would not have left it on record that they had an ancestor in
common if that had not been the fact.

I am not a canonist, but I cannot and dare not disdain, since the
marriage was forbidden 'on the usual ground of nearness of kin,'
to enquire what was in those days meant by nearness of kin, or
consanguinity ; and, curiously enough, all the information we re-
quire is to be found in the pages of history, not of canon law.

I. There is a passage in Orderic ^ which informs us that Henry
I. forbade the union of his nephew William Clito with Sibylle, the
daughter of Foulques, Count of Anjou, on the ground of con-
sanguinity ; and it proves them to have been coftsanguinei by a
statement of which this is a tabular transcript : —

' iii. 650, 2 iii go. * iii. 650. * Hist. EccL iii. ii, § 19.

VOL. I. E E

4x8 APPENDIX,

DUKE RICHARD I,

i ,

Duke Richard II. Robert.

1 I

Duke Robert I. Richard.

] I

Duke William II. Agnes.

I I

Duke Robert II. Bertrade.

I . I

William Chto. Foulques.

I
Sibylle.

That is to say, although one of the parties was removed by five
degrees, and the other by six, from a common ancestor, it would
have been a violation of the Christian law under which they lived to
be united as man and wife, ' diffinitum est eos secundum Christianam
legem conjungi non debere.'

2. And if I might without presumption wander so far afield as
to quote Yves of Chartres, I would remark that that prelate (Ep. 45)
forbade the marriage of Robert, Count of Meulan, with Elizabeth
the daughter of Hugh le Grand, because he was said to be descended
by five generations from a common ancestor with that lady ; and
refused to allow so scandalous a union to be blessed in his diocese
till satisfactory proof had been adduced in his presence that the
common ancestor was as far removed from one or other of them as
the eighth degree, ' nisi primum in prsesentia nostri consanguinitas
hsec septimum gradum excessisse legitime fuerit comprobata.' But
there is as little need to consult Yves of Chartres as the ' Acta
Conciliorum,' for the information I need may be obtained from
domestic sources.

3. According to Orderic the Council of Rouen, held in 1072,
decreed, * Si infra septimam generationem aliqua consanguinitas
inventa fuerit .... non conjungantur.'

4. William of Malmesbury informs us that, in the council held
in London in the year 1075, marriage was forbidden between persons
descended from a common ancestor at or within the distance of
seven degrees — seven degrees, that is to say, on either side, ^ ex
alterutrd, parte.^ ^

I am not a canonist, but it is notorious that, whereas nowa-
days marriages are forbidden between consanguinei as far as the
fourth degree, in the eleventh century that older Jus was still in
force which extended the range of canonical consanguinity over
a much wider field. Thus Nicholas II., the Pontiff to whom
^ Guil. Malm. De Gesiis Pontifiaim Anglorum, lib. i.

MR. STAPLETON'S THEORY. 419

Lanfranc applied for the dispensation, decreed, *Si quis infra
septimum consanguinitatis gradum uxorem habet , . . . ab episcopo
suo earn dimittere canonice compellatur. Si verb obedire noluerit
excom municetur. '

It was for the violation of this immemorial law of Christendom
that William and Matilda were punished. They broke that law
deliberately, and in doing so defied the authority which had issued a
special declaration of it to themselves by name. They knew what
to expect j they provoked their chastisement. They knew perfectly
well that they had at any rate one ancestor in common within seven
generations ; and Christendom knew it ; we know it.

William the Bastard was in the fifth degree of descent from
Duke Rollo, and Matilda was also descended from Duke Rollo
through Adela, the wife of her great-grandfather Hugh Capet.

By tlie law under which they lived William and Matilda were
consanguiiiei. I have stated that law, and have no more to say
about it.

And now for Mr. Slapleton's discovery that Gundrade was
Matilda's daughter by an earlier marriage. The discovery is a
mare's nest. Had they been thus related no one would have thought
of making a match between a son of Gundrade and a daughter
of Henry I. ; or had so scandalous a proposition been made — for
scandalous it would have been accounted — it would have been met
by a prohibition on the ground that the parties were cousins. Now,
curiously enough, a proposal was once made that William of
Warenne, second Earl of Surrey, should marry the daughter of
Henry I. ; and Archbishop Anselm forbade the alliance, not on the
ground that the parties were cousins, as he would have done had the
Earl's mother been the daughter of William the Conqueror or the
daughter of his queen, but on the ground that the Earl was in the
fourth generation, and the lady of his ambition in the sixth, from a
common ancestor. I append St. Anselm's letter, and deem it un-
necessary to say more in proof of my assertion that there was not a
drop of Matilda's blood in the veins of Gundrade : —

* Henrico charissimo suo domino Dei gratia regi Anglorum Anselmus
archiepiscopus fidele servitium cum orationibus.

'Gratias ago Deo pro bona voluntate quam vobis dedit, et
vobis qui eam servare studetis. Quaerit consilium celsitudo vestra
quid sibi faciendum sit de hoc quia pacta est filiam suam dare
Guillelmo de Vvarenne, cum ipse et filia vestra ex una parte sint

E E 2

420 APPENDIX,

co^nati in quarta generatione, et ex altera in sexta. Scitote absque
dubio quia nullum pactum servari debet contra legem Christianitatis.
Illi autem, si ita propinqui sunt, nuUo modo legitime copulari pos-
sunt, neque sine damnatione animarum suarum, neque sine magno
peccato eorura qui hoc ut fiat procurabunt. Precor igitur et consulo
vobis ex parte Dei sicut charissimo domino, ut nullatenus vos huic
peccato misceatis neque filiam vestram eidem Guillelmo contra
legem et voluntatem Dei tradatis. Omnipotens Deus dirigat vos et
omnes actus vestros in beneplacito suo.' ^

The common ancestor of the Earl and the King's daughter was
the father or mother — perhaps both father and mother — of Gunnor,
the mistress of Richard Sans Peur.

Still it may be urged that, after all, the first Earl William calls
the Conqueror's queen * mater uxoris meas,' and that the Conqueror
is at any rate averred to have written of Gundrade as ' filia mea.'

Precisely so. Matilda was Gundrade's mater, not her genetnx ;
and Gundrade was the Conqueror's Jilia, not her nata. Gundrade
was Matilda's godchild. Pater, mater ^ filius^ filia were the ordinary
appellations of god-parents and god-children. Nothing was more
common. Thus in the * Life of Halinard,' who governed the diocese
of Lyons in the course of the eleventh century, we are informed that
he was loved with paternal affection by a certain Bishop Walter,
cujusfiUus eratiti baptismate. Here, it is true, we have the explanatory
and qualifying words ' in baptismate '; but not so in every case. Thus
St Anselm writes to a canon of Beauvais (Ep. iii. io6), 'If you
are elected with the advice of Bishops Yves of Chartres and Gualo of
Paris, who were yoMX patres and were charged with your education,
you should not refuse the preferment.' And in the works of Yves
of Chartres there is a letter (Ep. 178) to the clergy of Dol, in which
the Bishop calls a certain Wulgrin his filius, whilst in another (Ep.
176), written on the same occasion, he says of Wulgrin 'eum de fonte
suscepimus.' It is the knowledge of the fact \h2Xfilius may mean,
and very often does mean, godson which has enabled me to assure
my readers that St. Anselm's maternal uncles Lambert and Folcerad
were his godfathers, for he calls himself their fih'us.

I could adduce other instances, but these are sufficient; and I
think I may without presumption affirm that I have proved two not
unimportant propositions — first, that when contemporary writers
condemned William's union with Matilda on the ground of consan-

* S. Anselmi Epp. iv. 84.

ST. ANSELM'S PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS. 421

guinity, they knew and meant what they said ; and secondly, that
Gundrade was not a daughter of Matilda. Mr. Stapleton's theory is
exploded.

P.S. Should the reader really care to enquire, Who, then, was
Gundrade? I would refer him to the following passage in the
'Registrum de Bermundesei' (Harley, 231) : 'a.d. m.xc.viij. Hoc
anno Ricardus Guet frater Comitissae Warene dedit manerium de
Cowyk monachis de Bermondeseie.' There is a similar entry in the
Bermondsey Chronicle.

This Cowyk is Cowickbury, now called, I believe, Quickbury,in
the parish of Sheering, in Essex.

When the Domesday survey for Essex was made this place was
held of Willelmus by one Ricardus. The superscription shows that
the Willelmus was the William of Warenne ; the Ricardus was, I
presume, Richard Guet (Wet or Wette ?), his brother-in-law.

NOTE C (p. 140).

ON THE PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS.

Before setting down the few remarks which follow I think it right
to say that, since my present work is biographical, not editorial, I do
not profess to decide which of all the works assigned to St. Anselm,
under the designation whether of prayers or meditations, are really
his. I do not undertake to review or criticise these works one by one,
even were I competent to the task ; I only propose to say of some of
them what I trust may be of service to a few of my readers, and not
uninteresting to a somewhat wider circle.

I. And first, taking Dom Gerberon's edition as text-book, I will
venture to say that I think the learned Benedictine has erred in
styling some of them meditations and the rest prayers, to the exclusion
in either category of the alternative designation ; for several reasons.

St. Anselm seems to have made no such distinction, since in a
collection of seven such compositions sent as a wedding present to
a princely lady of his acquaintance, he says, '■ I have added seven
prayers ' (' orationes '), ' the first of which is not so much a prayer as a
meditation' ('nontantum oratio quantum meditatio') (Ep. iv. 121).

The * Chronicon Beccense,' a document of unquestionable authority
in this particular, whilst dividing his treatises into twelve groups,
makes the eleventh consist of ' orationes contemJ>laHvce, which many
people call meditatwnesJ

The prologue which in Gerberon's edition begins, ' Meditationes

422 APPENDIX,

seu orationes,' and is prefixed by him to the twenty-one pieces which
he calls meditations, begins in the Rouen and in the Subiaco
collections, 'Orationes sive meditationes ' — a preferable reading, as
I believe — and refers indiscriminately to compositions which the
Benedictine has separated in distinct groups.

II. All the compositions which Gerberon has published as prayers
or as meditations of St. Anselm must not be too readily accepted as
genuine.

Of the twenty-one pieces published by Gerberon as meditations
we need not concern ourselves much with the last, which is a
compilation from the ' Proslogion;' it does not contain a word which is
not to be found in the authentic treatise. Still there is room to
question whether St. Anselm either made or sanctioned the compila-
tion. I doubt it. I am greatly inclined, on the other hand, to
believe that he did issue the argument for the existence of the
Supreme Being as it now stands in the second, third, and fourth
chapters of the ' Proslogion ' in a separate form. These three chapters
are the nucleus of the comet ; the rest are the tail.

The second meditation in Gerberon's collection is, as I believe,
the product of St. Anselm's pen throughout. It begins, ' Terret me
vita mea ; ' and Abbot Durand writes to St. Anselm, as we have
seen, of a composition, or fragment of a composition, with this
beginning. In the course, however, of my desultory enquiries I have
found a meditation of considerable fervour, in the course of which
are the words, * Merito ergo terret me vita mea,' continuing with
few and apparently unimportant variations from Gerberon's, and then
ended with other matter. Is this piece to which I allude St. Anselm's ?
Is it his, I mean, from beginning to end ? Was what Abbot Durand
read only a fragment? or, if it was not a fragment, did Anselm himself
work it up and incorporate it into a longer work ? Or is the piece to
which I refer an amalgam, partly Anselm's, partly some other person's ?

These are not idle questions. Here is a parallel case. The
second prayer in Gerberon's collection is, with the exception of some
very bad readings which that editor found in his MS., identical with
a very interesting copy with which I have happened to make
acquaintance ; identical, that is to say, for about two-thirds of its
length, down to the words ' impietatibus meis.' But there the copy
to which I refer ends. Which of the two is right ? What follows in
Dom Gerberon may or may not be Anselm's, but if it is Anselm's
was it meant by him to be attached to what goes before in Dom
Gerberon ? This is no idle question, for it bears upon another — this,

GERBERON'S COLLECTION OF THE PRAYERS. 423

namely, For whose use was the shorter form written, if indeed the
shorter form be a right one ? But on that I will say no more in this
place.

The seventh and eighth meditations in Gerberon's collection
are, with the possible, but barely possible, exception of two para-
graphs at the beginning of the former, not St. Anselm's, but some
other writer's. I have some claim to speak confidently on this
subject, for I have translated all the twenty-one pieces into English
leisurely and with care, and I shall never forget the dreary hours I
spent over this most melancholy, most inflated, and most obfuscated
composition. I have found it amongst MS. copies of Bishop
William du Puy's works, and it was published as his at Venice in
1591 ; published, I say, but published only in i)art, for after some
thirty lines the editor has set a merciful ' &c.' and spared the reader
pages of dreary woe. With the slight possible exception which I
have indicated, the seventh and eighth are not Anselm's.

The third is his, undoubtedly. I mention it to suggest a caution.
It was not written in propria persond. It may have been written, in
the first instance, for a specific case ; it may have been published in
the hope of doing good in cases which must occur, even if rarely.
But the assumption that Anselm wrote it for himself is simply
intolerable.

The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth in Gerberon's col-
lection of ' Meditations ' were assigned by Luke Holstein to -^Ired
of Rievaulx. One or two passages, particularly in the seventeenth,
may possibly be interpolated fragments from Anselm's writings, but
these do not affect the question of the authorship of the work as a
whole. For, in truth, the three pieces are one work. With the
exception, then, of one or two irrelevant passages, which may or
may not be Anselm's, the work as a whole is not his. Whoever
wrote it must have written it inproprid persona. There can scarcely,
at least, be a reasonable doubt of this. And if so it was not written
by Anselm, for it was not written for Anselm's use. I say nothing
about the style and manner of the work, but confine myself to the
unquestionable fact that St. Anselm's youth was unstained by the
sins which the writer of this work deplores.

Neglecting, therefore, the last of Gerberon's twenty-one ' Medita-
tions ' as one out of several spicilegia culled from the * Proslogion,'
five of the remaining twenty must be rejected — namely, the seventh,
eighth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth. The second, third, and
eleventh are genuine. I believe the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth to

424 APPENDIX,

be free from doubt, but cannot say as much for the ninth, tenth,
twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth.
Were it my object to study particularly the devotional style of St.
Anselm, I should confine my attention, for some time at least, to the
first six and the eleventh in Dom Gerberon's collection,^

III. Of the seventy-five prayers published as Anselm's we may,
without hesitation, accept as genuine the twentieth, twenty-third,
twenty-fourth, forty-first, fiftieth, fifty-first, fifty-second, sixty-second,^
sixty-fourth, sixty-fifth, sixty-seventh, sixty-eighth, sixty-ninth,
seventy-first, seventy-second, seventy-fourth, and seventy-fifth, and
perhaps the third, fourth, sixth, ninth, and thirty-fourth. The third
and fourth are styled ' Meditations ' in the Rouen collection.

The fiftieth and two following prayers are those of which St.
Anselm wrote to his friend Gundulf (Ep. i. 20).

The seventy-first presents a peculiarity. Some copies make it
an address to St. Martin, and others to St. Nicholas, whilst others
again assign it to one or the other at the reader's discretion. I am
inclined to believe that it was originally addressed to St. Martin, and
that, whether St. Anselm ever did or did not sanction this alternative
employment of it, he did compose a prayer to St. Nicholas, which was
sent after him in rough copy across the Channel in 1092, and never
returned to Le Bee. The popular devotion to St. Nicholas spread
like wild fire at the close of the eleventh century, and it is quite con-
ceivable that, pending the composition or the composition and
publication of a prayer to him by the famous abbot — for by this time
Anselm was known from end to end of Christendom — people should
have made use of a previous composition of his which 77mtato nomine
served their purpose.

IV. I have already alluded to a collection of seven prayers or
meditations which Anselm sent to a royal lady, apparently on occa-
sion of her marriage. Of these one was addressed to St. Stephen,
the other to St. Mary Magdalene. They may have been the sixty-
ninth and the seventy-fifth of Gerberon's collection ; two, that is to
say, out of the group of devotional pieces, some twenty in number,
which I beHeve to be the set of meditative prayers mentioned in the
' Chronicon Beccense.' Of this it is impossible to speak confi-
dently. But I think I have laid my finger on one of the seven — the

• St. Anselm's style is by no means easy of translation into English. Where,
therefore, we find sentence after sentence turn itself, as it were, into English, we
may be sure that it is not his.

2 To St. John the Baptist.

QUEEN ADELA OF DENMARK, ' 425

second, namely, in Gerberon's edition— or rather so much of it as is
comprised between the beginning and the sentence endimg with
' propitieris omnibus impietatibus meis.' Whilst collating Gerberon's
reprint with the copy which I have mentioned, I could not but
observe, and with satisfaction, that tumoris^ not timoi'is, must be the
right reading in the following sentence : ' Memor perpetuae nobili-
tatis semper fastidiam ventos hujus transitorii tumoris.' It recalled
to mind passages in which tumor is used for the pride of birth, and
I felt sure that nobilitas must here be used in the sense of royalty ;
so that my investigations on this last word, however uninteresting
they may be deemed, had not been made in vain. I. felt sure that
the prayer had been composed for the use of a royal personage ; and
the assurance was only confirmed by what I next noticed, the
numerous allusive references to royalty which occur in the prayer.
I then remembered Anselm's letter to the Queen of Denmark, and
on reperusing the prayer was struck with another fact to which I
must now invite the attention of my readers.

It may be unnecessary to say that women, and communities of
women, are not permitted in their devotional use, for example, of
the Psalter, to change words of the masculine gender, which are
susceptible of such change, into corresponding forms in the feminine.
Thus it would be out of all order for a woman to say, ' Ecce enim
in iniquitatibus concepta (instead of ' conceptus ') sum.' Such
changes are not permitted, have never been permitted, as I believe ;
and the same remark holds good of all liturgical forms of devotion,
hymns and prayers as well as psalms.

Now it is a remarkable fact, never as yet noticed, as I believe,
that this second prayer, though it does not violate this general rule,
is yet so composed as not to be subject to its application. There is
nothing in it to betray the sex of the persona loqiiens. It is so
composed as, while not violating the general rule, not to violate that
character of absolute appropriateness which a lady who had been
supplied with a prayer from the pen of such a man as St. Anselm
would expect to find in it.^ I have no doubt, therefore, that it was
composed for the use of a princess. It may be one of the seven
prayers sent to the Queen of Denmark.

The tenth prayer offers precisely the same characteristic, a most
remarkable characteristic, to which justice can only be done by a

* There is one apparent exception in Gerberon's ' mihi reo videns congaude
Eva,' but there can be little doubt that the reo is an interpolation. It is not in
any MS. that I have examined.

426 APPENDIX.

careful perusal of all these pieces ; and I have not the slightest doubt
that it was written for the use of a woman — perhaps the Queen
of Denmark, perhaps the Countess Ida, perhaps the Marchioness
Matilda, perhaps Queen Matilda.

The twelfth prayer is in the same category ; the persona loquens is
characterised by no adjectives in the masculine gender, or by any-
thing else that would be out of harmony with its use by a woman.
But there is nothing in it to indicate the social rank of the person
for whom it was composed.

The same may be said of the fourteenth, which was probably
written for a widow, and perhaps of the thirty-eighth.

None of these five, neither the second, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth,
or thirty- eighth, are included in the collection which I believe him
to have put forth for the use of his monks while he was at Le Bee.
Their issue was private, their destination personal.

V. If I am right in my conjecture about the prayers which
constituted the orationes meditativce put out by St. Anselm whilst he
was at Le Bee, that collection can scarcely have contained one to St.
Nicholas.

1. The devotion to this saint was new in the West in the year
1088, and can scarcely have reached Le Bee much before 1090, if so
early.

2. St. Anselm's collection of prayers would seem to have been
composed while he was prior — anterior, that is to say, to the year
1078. It would be an extravagance of literary scrupulosity to set
their publication as late as 1090, within the last two years out of the
thirty which he spent first as prior and then as abbot.

3. The saints addressed in those prayers are the Blessed Virgin
Mary, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, and SS. Peter,
Paul, Stephen, Martin, Benedict, and Mary Magdalene. Guided by
the late history of the monastery, I am inclined to think that there
were altars to these several saints either in the church at Le Bee, in
chapelries on the domain, or in dependent cells. ^

' We have no information as to the number of altars at Le Bee at the time
that the collection of prayers was put out. Six altars were consecrated in 1077,
it is true ; but there must already have been others, for the church had been in
use for four years. In 1342 thirteen altars were consecrated in the newly built
church to as many saints. I suspect that there were nine in Herlwin's church, and
that the book of prayers was meant for use .within its walls ; for the nine saints
whom I have named in the text had altars in 1342, our Lady having two and
SS. Peter and Paul sharing one— the ninth. The tenth was to St. Nicholas, and
I believe an altar to his honour to have been set up and consecrated some fifteen

FIRST EDITION OF THE PRAYERS. 427

4. There seems to have been an altar to St. Nicholas in the
church as early as the year 1109, and how much earher I cannot say ;
and a chapel on the way to La Baronnerie, or at any rate somewhere
in the wood ' quae vulgo dicitur Roboretum ' — whence the modern
Bosrobert, an adjoining commune — about the same time.

5. St. Anselm seems to have just finished a prayer to St. Nicholas
when he left Le Bee in 1092. It was sent after him to England.

On the whole, then, I think it likely that the devotion to St.
Nicholas was estabhshedat Le Bee in or about 1092 ; that the monks
asked Anselm to compose them a prayer in his honour ; that until
such prayer should be composed they used mutato nomine that
intended for St. Martin, which they already had in their collection
of orationes meditativce. ; that in the dismay and confusion which
befell Le Bee on Anselm's appointment to the see of Canter-
bury they either forgot the prayer to St. Nicholas on which he had
been engaged, or refused to ask him for it, or failed to get it, or,
getting it, preferred to go on using what they had already used ; and
that their copies of it were never abundant at Le Bee. And it is
thus that I account for the fact that there is no prayer proper to St.
Nicholas in the published works of Anselm. Yet a prayer proper to
St. Nicholas he certainly did compose, and I think I may have
succeeded in finding it.

On reverting, after the lapse of a year, to the foregoing note, I
find nothing to alter, although I have a little to add.

L There can be no doubt that Dom Gerberon erred in dividing
these devotional works into two distinct categories ; for four or five
examples, written during the saint's life or soon afterwards, which
still survive, make no such distinction.

IL As to Oratio IL, as Gerberon calls it, I have found a piece
containing part of it, and thus entitled : ' Pars orationis Anselmi in
fine.' It begins, * Omnipotens Pater et misericors Deus per omni-
potentes Filii tui' (ib. clviii. 859B), and ends 'omnibus iniquitatibus
meis. Amen ' (ib. 862c).

III. The first published collection contained, if I mistake not,
the following prayers, neither more nor less : —

1. To Christ, Or. 20.

2. To the Holy Cross, Or. 41.

3. 4, 5. To the Blessed Virgin, Or. 50, 51, 52.
6. To St. John the Baptist, Or. 62.

years after the dedication of the church. The three remaining saints had received
their honours subsequently to Ansehn's day.

428 APPENDIX,

7. To St. Peter, Or. 64.

8, 9. To St. John the Evangelist, Or. 67, 68.

10. To St. Stephen, Or. 69.

11. To St. Martin or St. Nicholas, Or. 71.

12. To St. Benedict, Or. 72.

13. To Mary Magdalene, Or. 74.

14. To any patron saint. Or. 75.

15. A prayer for friends, Or. 23.

16. For enemies, Or. 24.

17. The terret me, Mad. 2.

18. The deploratio, Mad. 3.

In which case, as I have said, the church consecrated in 1077 had
nine altars — the high altar, the Lady altar, and seven others.

But I say no more, lest the reader accuse me of neglecting
biography for editorship.

NOTE D (p. 273).

ON RENOUF FLAMBARD'S SURVEY.

Orderic's account is as follows : * Hie juvenem .... inquietavit
regem, incitans ut totius Angliae reviseret descriptionem, Anglic?eque
telluris comprobans iteraret partitionem, subditisque recideret ....
quidquid inveniretur ultra certam dimensionem.' This must, at least,
mean that he made a review of the Domesday Survey in order to deal
with estates that exceeded a certain area. It cannot mean — for that
would be absurd — that he made a survey of every little holding in the
country, in order to curtail the large ones ; nor need it mean that his
reference to Domesday was made with a view to any estates but such
as exceeded the proposed maximum. This was one part of his
scheme.

The other is thus described : ' Annuente rege, omnes carrucates,
quas Angli hidas vocant, funiculo mensus est et descripsit, post-
positisque mensuris quas liberales Angli jussu Edwardi regis largiter
distribuerant imminuit.' He grows obscure, however, when he
adds * et, regales fiscos accumulans, colonis arva retruncavit.' No
augmentation of a tax can diminish the area of a field ; and I
suppose he m.eans that the result of the enhanced taxation was much
the same to small tenants as if their holdings had been curtailed.
Before, however, this retruncatio was effected the earlier immimctio of
the hide had taken place ; and the explanation I have to offer of a
confessedly difficult passage is, I think, justified by what follows,

RENOUF FLAMBARD'S SURVEY. 429

where the double process of the reduction of the unit of measurement
and the augmentation of the assessment is described in other terms
— 'Rurisitaque . . . . diminutione et insohti vectigaHs gravi exaggera-
tione, suppHces .... plebes indecenter oppressit ' — and where by
di?mnutio rims we are, I 'apprehend, to understand the inevitable
consequence of the immimdio hidarum, just as by vedigalis
exaggeratio the means taken for the accumulcUio fiscoru7n \ not, that
is to say, that the riis was lessened in area, but that for fiscal
purposes it was subdivided into an immense number of diminished
hides. That is to say, innnimiere hidam is to cut down a liberally
measured hide to a scanty one; and diminuere riis is to cut up,
or parcel out, the land into areas rigorously kept down to the standard
of the niggardly hide.

This account of the double process of diminiitio ruris by means
of imminutio hidarum^ and of exaggeratio vedigalis resulting in accu-
midatio fiscorum^ lends countenance to a literal interpretation of
William of Malmesbury's 'duplum adjiciebat.' For if where the
Confessor had counted six hides William Rufus counted ten, and
where the Conqueror had imposed a tax of six shillings William
Rufus imposed ten, the man who had once paid thirty-six shillings
would now have to pay a hundred ; and the effect of this surcharge of
sixty-four per cent, in the new tax would be to retrench {retruncare)
the available produce of the land ; and this, as I hinted above, is
the best sense I can make of 'arva retruncavit.'

All estates then, whether large or small, were afflicted with the
retruncatio ai'vorum^ which resulted from the double infliction of
imminutio hidarum and acciimulatio fiscorum.

But the cutting down to a prescribed limit would, on the other
hand, affect only large estates. How many and what estates were
thus treated I do not pretend to guess. It is a curious fact, how-
ever, that as early as the reign of Henry IH. the lowy of Tunbridge
had been greatly reduced from its original dimensions. Can it be
that this was one of the properties that suffered ?

To return, however, to Orderic.

I think that the best way of interpreting the whole passage is to
make him mean to tell us that —

I. Renouf set the King upon making a careful review of the
Domesday Survey, and going over for a second time the apportion-
ment of the soil to which that document bore witness, the specific
object being to cut down {recidere) all large estates to a certain area.
This process, be it observed, related only to large estates, and could

430 ' APPENDIX,

be carried out without any reduction of the unit of measurement.
Actual survey, be the unit of measurement what it might, was all
that was needed by way of information as to their extent. He set
the King upon this, then.

II. But this was not all. He obtained the King's consent to
another scheme, and that scheme was to affect all holdings . By it
he reduced {imminuit) all the hides employed in the Confessor's
time, some of which may have contained fifty, some seventy, some a
hundred acres, to one restricted measure of, perhaps, from thirty to
forty acres, and by this means cut up {diminuif) a few large
taxable acres into many small ones. This done, he enhanced
(exaggeravit) the assessment per hide, and then applying it to the
riis diniinutiim — to the land, that is to say, which he had parcelled
out into little hides — brought immense receipts into the royal
treasure.

The first scheme, the scheme to which he prompted the King, was
a recisio telhirisy or carving off from this and that large estate all that
exceeded a fixed maximum. The second scheme, the scheme which
he induced the King to sanction, issued in a retruncatio arvonim,
because its practical effect was to oblige landowners, great and small,
to part with a large percentage of the produce of the land for the
payment of an artificially augmented tax.

The first scheme aimed at a carving off of land, recisio telluris \
the second issued in a retrenchment of crops, retruncatio arvorum.
And just as decimatio arvorum would be a legitimate phrase by which
to express the modern process of tithe commutation, so would
retruncatio arvoi'um be for that which required a landowner to
sacrifice an undue portion of his crops for the payment of a tax.

On the whole, then, I think that the passage under consideration
may be satisfactorily explained by a careful attention to the mean-
ing of the four words recisio^ imminutio^ di7ninutio, and retruncatio.
To cut a piece off from an estate is recidere that estate ; to reduce an
unit of superficial measurement is imminuere that unit ; to chop up
an area into small portions is diminuere that area ; to deduct an ex-
cessive percentage from the monetary yield of your crops is retruncare
those crops.

ST. ANSELM'S ELECTION TO THE PRIMACY. 431

NOTE E (p. 356).

ON SOME REMARKS BY MR. FREEMAN UPON ST. ANSELM's PROMOTION
TO THE EPISCOPATE.

, It is not without reluctance that I call attention to some remarks
made by Mr. Freeman upon St. Anselm's elevation to the Primacy
of Britain. That gentleman says (' Norman Conquest/ vol. v.
pp. 137 et seqq.), (i) 'Anselm's unwillingness was simply an un-
willingness to accept the office under any form. . . .' (2) 'He
received the staff from the King's hand.' (3) 'He became the
King's man. . . .' (4) 'Nor do we find Anselm expressing the slightest
scruple as to receiving the archbishopric by the gift of the King only,
(5) without any reference to the elective rights of the monks of Christ
Church or of any other ecclesiastical body. . . .' (6) ' Of any con-
scientious dislike to the way in which the archbishopric was conferred,
repugnant as that way was to all the doctrines for which Hildebrand
and his successors had been striving, we hear in the present stage of
Anselm's history not a word.'

I. As to the first statement, Mr. Freeman adduces nothing in
support of it. It is quite true that Anselm was unwilling to accept
the archbishopric ' under any form/ whatever may be the precise
meaning of those words ; but it is sorry logic thence to conclude
that he was indifferent to the ceremony with which it might be
offered. I have spent five years in the study of St. Anselm's history ;
I have read and re-read all that Eadmer says of him ; read and re-
read, as I conscientiously believe, all his letters ; read and re-read all
that I have been able to find of contemporaneous record \ and I
feel that I am not guilty of presumption in declaring that the sugges-
tion that Anselm, but for his unwillingness to be made Archbishop,
would not have been unwilling to receive the crosier from the
King's hand, has not even the phantom of a shadow upon which to
rest.

II. But the suggestion sinks into insignificance before the astound-
ing statement that he did so receive it — * he received the staff from the
King's hand.' It is hard to believe that Mr. Freeman can have read
either Eadmer's account or that of Gervase. Anselm did not receive
the crosier from the King's hand. Eadmer says, ' Ciimque raperetur
ad regem ut per virgam pastoralem investituram archiepiscopat^is de
manu ejus susciperet toto conamine restitit' {c\\x. 366); and again,

432 APPENDIX.

* Rege autem ei baciilum porrigente manum contrk clausit et eum
suscipere nequaquam consensit ; ' Gervase (' Actus Pontiff. Cant.'),
' Cumque ad regem renitens traheretur ut secundum morem baculum
susciperet pastoralem, ab/wrruif Anselmus et quantum potuit renisus
est. Adjuncto tamen utcunque manui ipsius de foris baculo, prse-
cepitrex,' &c. If a refusal, and not only so but a persistent refusal,
to receive be the same thing as to receive, language is no longer the
vehicle of human thought.

III. If, by the third statement, which is only separated by a
semicolon from the second, Mr. Freeman wishes to suggest that
Anselm became the King's man pro archiepiscopatu^ I can only say
that I know of no authority for the insinuation. Anselm did
homage, it is true ; not, however, pro archiepiscopatu^ but, as Mr.
Freeman has failed to inform his readers, pro usu terrcB, which is
quite another thing. ' Ille igitur,' says Eadmer, * more et exemplo
prsedecessoris sui inductus, pro usu terra, homo regis factus est ' (clix.
372).

IV. As to the fourth statement, I must trouble the reader with a
few quotations, to which Mr. Freeman's attention can scarcely, I
should imagine, have been directed.

§ I . Eadmer's account is as follows : — ' Meanwhile all the good
people present urged the King to release the common mother of the
whole realm from her long widowhood by the appointment of a
pastor ('instituendo illi pastorem'). He willingly consented. . . .
The question thereupon arose, Who could best perform the duties of
the post ? But as all present waited for a hint from the King (' cunctis
ad nutum regis pendentibus '), he took the lead, and declared that
Abbot Anselm was the most worthy of such a dignity, and the accla-
mation of all present, not one excepted, seconded his words (' prse-
nuntiavit ipse et concordi voce subsequitur acclamatio omnium
abbatem Anselmum tali honore dignissimum ') (ib. 365, 366).

This account represents the King as taking the lead, not as
claiming, much less as exercising, a sole and exclusive power of
nomination.

Apart, however, from this consideration we must remember that
Eadmer here describes what took place in the presence of Anselm
and his companions Eustace and Baldwin, and that it by no means
follows that the subject had not already been discussed by the
primates regni before their arrival at the Castle. The passages which
I am about to quote will throw some light upon this subject. My
main object, as I need scarcely remind the reader, is to show that

THE LORDS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL. 433

Mr. Freeman is mistaken in supposing that Anselm owed his pro-
motion to *the gift of the King only.'

§ 2. Orderic informs us (iii. 309) that Anselm mounted the
throne of Canterbury after it had been three years vacant, and owed
his promotion to ecclesiastical election ( ' ecclesiastica electione promo-
tus' ) ; to ecclesiastical election, not to the gift of the King only.

§ 3. Again, Orderic says (ib. 314), 'When Holy Church heard the
royal order about the election of a metropolitan she rejoiced exceed-
ingly, and assembling the conventus sem'orum,'^ began to discuss the
business about which they were gathered together. At length, re-
gard being had to the holiness and wisdom of the venerable Anselm,
they unanimously elected him in the name of the Lord (' omnes eum
elegerunt in nomine Domini ').

This is a very different account from Mr, Freeman's. The
ecclesia — that is to say, as I believe, the episcopate or the bishops and
abbots — and the conventus seniorum — or, as I suppose, the barons —
made their choice of a successor to Lanfranc ; the appointment was
not a mere act of the King's. At what point in the story this
election was made is an interesting question, but scarcely relevant at
this moment.

§ 4. John of Salisbury informs us ('Vita S. Anselmi Cant.' cap.
vii.) that after the King was taken ill he listened to the advice of his
wise men, who suggested that Anselm should be promoted to the
archbishopric, saying that he was most worthy to occupy that post of
highest dignity ('languore tactus et sapientium motus consilio
acquiescit ut in archiepiscopum promoveatur Anselmus, dicens eum
summo honore dignissimum '). This passage receives elucidation
from the next which I have to adduce.

§ 5. Matthew Paris ('Hist. Major,' s.a. 1094), when recording the
attempt made by the Red King to extort a thousand pounds from
Anselm a week or two after the consecration, informs us that the
prince alleged as his excuse that he had received nothing for consent-
ing to Anselm's promotion. (' Ad hoc alligabat, ut sibi videbatur
causam justissimam quod gratis promotioni suae annuisset.') The
promotion to which he consented cannot have been his own act.
The appointment cannot be attributed to ' the King only.'

' What Orderic's conventus seniorum may be is a question of secondary
importance in view of Mr. Freeman's statement. Whoever the seniores may have
been, they were not the King . I suspect, let the idea be taken at its worth, that
he means to say that the earls were summoned by the bishops to consuU with them.

VOL. T. F F

434 APPENDIX,

§ 6. The anonymous author of the * Life of Bishop Gundulf, a
prelate whom the biographer would seem to have known intimately,
and from whom there can be little doubt that he had taken care
to gain an accurate account of the whole business, tells us (Migne,
clix. 826) that when the bishops and barons saw how great danger
threatened the King they humbly begged him, seeing in what a
predicament they were, to appoint a primate — not to elect ; nor, if
electing, to elect regardless of their wishes ; but to appoint (* ut
eis . . . . primatem constitueret ' )— and goes on to say that the
King having listened to their advice, they unanimously elected Anselm
(' omnes pariter providente gratia Dei Anselmum eligunt '), and hav-
ing elected sent for him ('electum advocant'); and that when he
came, although he resisted with all his might, they made him Arch-
bishop— they, not 'the King only' ('vocatum licet totis viribus
renitentem archiepiscopum statuunt ').

That is to say, they asked for a conge dehre, and, having received
it, chose Anselm. Whatever the distinction designed by the writer
between their statnere and the King's consiitiiere, it is evident that
Anselm did not owe his promotion to ' the King only.' Whether the
King had confirmed their election prior to Anselm's arrival at the
Castle, or was prevented doing so before the subject was resumed in
Anselm's presence, is irrelevant at the present moment.

§ 7. Nor is evidence wanting from the saint himself. In the very
affecting letter which he wrote to his monks at Le Bee some little
time before he accepted the archbishopric — I need scarcely say that
he persistently refused to accept it for some five or six months after
the date at which Mr. Freeman supposes him to have received it — he
says, appealing to God, ' Thou seest, and be Thou my Witness that
.... I cannot without sin tear myself free from the determination
made by my electors ; ' and again, ' Whatever may be my own wish
with regard to the accomplishment of what men have set on foot in
their election of me, " lead me in Thy way " ' (Ep. iii. 7).

§ 8. Is more needed ? If so, I will adduce the King himself as
a witness. Eadmer tells us (' H. N.' i.) that when the sovereign sent
for Anselm soon after their interview at Rochester, he did so because
he had two requests to make, the first of which was that he would no
longer hold out in refusing to become Archbishop ' />/ pursuance of

his election by the whole realm ' (* quatenus secundum totius

regni de eo factam electionem pontifex fieri ultro non negaret')
(clix. 371).

PEERS, CLERGY, AND PEOPLE. 435

I might stop here, were it not that I have two passages to
adduce which will serve to convince the reader that had Mr.
Freeman consulted SL Anselm's correspondence — the first ten letters
of the third book all relate to the appointment — he would scarcely
have ventured to make the assertion with which I am at present
dealing-

§ 9. During the interval that elapsed between Anselm's appoint-
ment and his acceptance of the dignity Dom Osbern of Christ
Church wrote him two letters, imploring him not to withhold his
consent any longer. In the former of them he says, * Knowing as I
do your singular skill in the discernment of truth ' (an allusive refer-
ence, no doubt, to Anselm's famous ' De Veritate ') * it seems to me a
strange thing that in this one and only instance your tact and versa-
tility in discerning truth should have played you false, and that you
can blind yourself to the plain will of God, declared by the common
voice of holy Church concerning you. If you mean to maintain
that what has been proclaimed to be the will of God by the general
election of you, or by the election, if not of all the electors, yet cer-
tainly of the overwhelming majority of them, and those the wisest
(* generalis electio vel omnium vel certe qukm multb maxime plurium
et eorum sapientissimorum '), is displeasing to God . . . .' (Ep.
iii. 2).

§ 10. My last evidence is good Bishop Gundulf himself, a
tioluntaruis co-operator, and, not improbably, the chief conspirator .
If any evidence be trustworthy, it is his ; nor have we far to seek for
it It was he who broke the news to the good people at Le Bee, and
as follows : —

* Gundulf us gratia Dei .... servis Dei Becci consistenti-
biis . . . .'

' You know, my dearest friends, for how long a time the
English Church has been bereft and deprived of her own proper
pastor, how long she has lain desolate without the consolation of a
father. Thanks to the unspeakable almighty power of God, our
lord the King of the English has, with the advice and at the request
of his peers (' principum '), and at the prayer and by the election of
clergy and people (' cleri quoque et populi petitione et electione ')
conferred the government of the Church of Canterbury upon Dom
Anselm, your abbot. There cannot be a doubt that this has been
done by the all-merciful hand and guiding of God. We therefore

436 APPENDIX.

humbly bid and earnestly entreat you, as our most dear brethren,
to lay aside all sadness and all thought of grievance, if any there
be ; and, rather than oppose the will and handiwork of God and
the election of good men, to give thanks to God and submit with joy
and goodwill to what has taken place.'

To resume the evidence afforded us by the ten passages which I
have cited : —

The first, it is true, says nothing about an election, but for the
simple reason that it relates to events which took place subsequently

(§i).

The seventh makes mention of electors, but gives no particulars ;
it is especially valuable, however, as coming from Anselm himself

(§?)•

The others are to this effect : —
(i) That Anselm became Primate by eledto ecdesiastica (§ 2).

(2) That he was the elected of the whole realm (§ 8).

(3) That his promotion was the issue of a generalis electio, if not

by all the electoral bodies, at any rate by the majority, and
these the wisest of them (§ 9).

(4) That he was unanimously elected by ecdesia and by conventus

seniorum (§ 3).

(5) That he was unanimously elected by the bishops and the

prindpes regni{% 6).

(6) That, recommended by the YJmg's prindpes y he was elected by

derus dindi populus — clergy and laity (§ 10).

(7) That, the election made, the King's counsellors {sapienies)

suggested to him that Anselm was the most fitting person for
the dignity (§ 4).

(8) That the King acquiesced in the suggestion (§ 4).

(9) That he consented to the promotion (§ 5).

(10) That he did so without, as was his wont, exacting a pecuniary
recognition (§ 5).

§ 1 1. It is to slay the slain to add more, and yet I will dare to
do so. The following is Milo Crispin's account in his Life of Abbot
William, St Anselm's successor at Le Bee : — * When the King's life
was almost despaired of, his bishops and barons admonished him for
the saving of his soul to choose some good man and appoint
him (* constitueret ') Archbishop of Canterbury. " Whom ? " he asked.
" Abbot Anselm," was their reply. This pleased the King, who at once
gave orders for him to be sent for. So then by the election of King

THE CHRIST CHURCH MONKS. 437

and barons, by the acclamation of clergy and people, and by the
evident disposition of Divine providence, he is chosen Primate of all
Britain,' &c. (cl. 715).

So much, then, for Mr. Freeman's fourth statement that St.
Anselm received the archbishopric by the gift of the King only,
and yet expressed no scruple. As he did not receive the archbishopric
by the gift of the King only, he can have had no such scruple
to express.

V. As to the Christ Church monks, Mr. Freeman must know
as well as anyone that they, of all people in the world, were the
very men who most wished to havfe Anselm for Archbishop ; and
that had Anselm in the King's bedchamber, on the sixth of March,
complained that their co-operation was necessary to his election, he
would by the very fact of making such complaint have sealed his
own fate. And Mr. Freeman must know as well as anyone who of
all historians would in that case have been the readiest to call the poor
saint by some very hard names. As it happens, however, when the
moment came for doing so with propriety and without sacrifice of his
proverbial prudence, Anselm did complain that the vote of the Christ
Church monks had not concurred in his election.

VI. Mr. Freeman's sixth remark is a somewhat hasty deduction
from the fifth, which in its turn is not likely to command the assent
of anyone who is in the habit of revising his mental processes.

I am sorry to say, however, that it is scarcely accurate as a
statement of facts. The truth is that ' Hildebrand and his successors '
had not legislated on ' these matters' — that is to say, on lay investiture
and homage — but only on one of them — that is to say, on lay investiture
— and how Mr. Freeman can have slipped into the mistake of imagining
that in 1093 the two things were in the same category surpasses
comprehension ; for the first Papal legislation upon homage took
place, as Mr. Freeman ought to know, subsequently to that year.

"What, then, was Anselm's conduct with regard to lay investiture ?
He rejected it. He absolutely refused to receive the crosier at the
King's hand. What more would Mr. Freeman have had him do ?
Make a speech and aggravate the physical'struggle in which he was
already engaged by a wordy controversy in which he would certainly
have been shouted down, and the most probable issue of which would
have been to rend England then and there from Christendom ? I
know of one writer who, had Anselm been so foolish as that, could
have found some very cruel things to say about him.

Surely Mr. Freeman's better judgment has by this time informed

438 APPENDIX.

him of the frightful troubles which Anselm would have invoked by
the utterance of any such ' word' as he fails to find. Nor need those
of my readers who estimate sin as Anselm did be told that he was
not the man to send a dying King into eternity with the guilt of
schism on his soul.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON : PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE

AND PARLIAMENT STREET

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